tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142786432014-10-14T15:00:14.317-07:00Books: Consumed and Digested -- Reviews, news, interviews by Edward NawotkaReviews, news, interviews by Edward NawotkaEdward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.comBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-35430227053321136372012-09-26T12:15:00.004-07:002012-09-26T12:15:44.847-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><h1 class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: Sentinel, Georgia, serif; font-size: 2.1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Andrew Porter's Novel Has a Houston Problem</h1><div class="subhead" style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.85em; line-height: 1.4em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 5px;">The San Antonio writer's novel,&nbsp;<em style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In Between Days,&nbsp;</em>doesn't get its Houston setting quite right.</div><div class="byline" style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 0px;">by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/authors/edwardnawotka.php" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Edward Nawotka</a>&nbsp;for Texas Monthly</div><div class="storydate" style="background-color: white; color: #968341; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 10px; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-09-01" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">SEPTEMBER 2012</a></div><div id="sharecontainer" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" style="left: 1px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; 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background-position: 10px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #7891a3; display: inline; height: 17px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 0px 26px; text-decoration: none;">Feeds</a></li></ul></div></div><div class="clearnopadding" id="storycomments" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid rgb(206, 206, 200); clear: both; float: right; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px 8px; max-width: 213px; padding: 0px; width: 213px;"><div class="multibox" style="list-style: none; margin: 5px; padding: 0px;"><div style="color: #3a3131; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px;"><a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/magazine/comments/16613" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Add your comment&nbsp;<span class="highlight" style="color: #968341; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">»</span></a></div></div><div class="multibox" style="list-style: none; margin: 5px; padding: 0px;"><div class="para" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><fb:like class="fb_edge_widget_with_comment fb_iframe_widget" fb-xfbml-state="rendered" href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/2012-09-01/webextra3.php" layout="button_count" style="display: inline-block; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><span style="display: inline-block; height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: text-bottom; width: 75px;"><iframe class="fb_ltr" id="f2664b31c" name="f2912723ec" scrolling="no" src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?api_key=110368485674433&amp;channel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D11%23cb%3Dfe4ea821c%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.texasmonthly.com%252Ff23b1ef46c%26domain%3Dwww.texasmonthly.com%26relation%3Dparent.parent&amp;extended_social_context=false&amp;href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.texasmonthly.com%2F2012-09-01%2Fwebextra3.php&amp;layout=button_count&amp;locale=en_US&amp;node_type=link&amp;sdk=joey&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=90" style="border-style: none; height: 20px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 75px;" title="Like this content on Facebook."></iframe></span></fb:like></div></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 10px;">San Antonio writer Andrew Porter’s debut novel,<em style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;In Between Days&nbsp;</em>(Knopf), is a powerful portrait of family dysfunction, a worthy successor to his award-winning short story collection,&nbsp;<em style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Theory of Light and Matter</em>. Unfortunately, Porter’s close observations of upper-middle-class unhappiness aren’t matched by a deep knowledge of his story’s Houston setting. He mentions that one character worked at the Whole Foods in Montrose three years ago, even though the store opened last year, and another character refers to Nuevo Laredo as “New Laredo,” which is simply unheard of. There’s a general fogginess about Houston life that will be apparent even to recent transplants—the main characters almost never leave the small Montrose neighborhood, which is all but impossible to conceive. It feels as if Porter visited the city, spoke at Rice, made some notes, and left it at that. He hits the obvious places a hip young writer would learn about as a visitor to Houston but not the places where a hip young Houston writer would actually hang out. So, rather than a depiction of a specific time and place, take&nbsp;<em style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In Between Days</em>&nbsp;as a universal comment about love, loyalty, and loss. In this, it succeeds.</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-59883354883579089112012-09-26T12:15:00.000-07:002012-09-26T12:15:17.239-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Sentinel, Georgia, serif; font-size: 2.1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Man Who Knows Too Much</h1><div class="storyfloat" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; float: right; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px 12px; max-width: 215px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596064048" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="vertical" height="308" src="http://www.texasmonthly.com/cms/dispImage.php?id=3522" style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="215" /></a><div class="imgCaption" style="color: #3a3131; font-size: 0.7em; font-style: italic; line-height: 16px; list-style: none; margin-left: 4px; margin-right: 4px; padding: 2px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596064048" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Buy it at Amazon</a><br style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><span class="imgCredit" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Photograph by Adam Voorhes</span></div></div><div class="subhead" style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.85em; line-height: 1.4em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 5px;">Bruce Sterling has an unnervingly good track record of predicting the future. And what he sees just keeps getting darker and darker.</div><div class="byline para" style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.6em; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 2px 0px 0px;">by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/authors/edwardnawotka.php" style="color: #7891a3; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Edward Nawotka</a>&nbsp;for Texas Monthly</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 10px;"><strong style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In another life&nbsp;</strong>Bruce Sterling would have made a tremendous fire-and-brimstone preacher. Since he began publishing in the seventies, the Brownsville-born author has been warning us to be careful about rushing headlong into the future. His novels presaged, among other things, wearable computers, the growing power of global capital, and terrorists using mass media to broadcast executions. The twenty-first century we’re living in looks much like the one he imagined in his twentieth-century fiction.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #3a3131; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style: none; padding: 2px 0px 10px;">Sterling is best known as a godfather of cyberpunk, the science fiction subgenre that shifted readers’ attention from distant futures and far-flung galaxies to near-future dystopias dominated by, as one description put it, “high tech and low life.” Sterling (along with the better-known William Gibson) not only predicted much of what we call the Internet but actively shaped our expectations of it. Further collapsing the already small distance between his writing and&nbsp;...</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-35877189359182121192012-09-26T12:13:00.002-07:002012-09-26T12:13:40.941-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="widget navigation breadcrumb" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #005589; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.875em; line-height: 1.1em; margin: 0px 0px 20px; min-height: 1em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/" style="color: #005689; text-decoration: none;">Home</a>&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/" style="color: #005689; text-decoration: none;">Entertainment</a>&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/headlines/" style="color: #005689; 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float: right; line-height: 0 !important; margin: 0px !important; padding-right: 3px; position: relative; top: 2px; vertical-align: middle;"><span class="ArticleSocialToolsLargeText" style="display: inline-block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 32px; padding-right: 10px; vertical-align: middle;">A</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsText" style="display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: middle;">Text Size</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="large" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-up.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="small" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-down.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span></span><div style="clear: both; float: none !important;"></div></div></div><div class="widget storyContent article leadDisplay" style="margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article subtitle articleSubhead" style="margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article byline" style="margin-top: 20px;"><div class="byline"><div class=""><div style="float: left; width: 305px;"><div class="authorName" style="color: #333333; float: left; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 0px; width: 310px;">By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Ed Nawotka is editor of PublishingPerspectives.com. He lives in Houston.</div><div class="authorDateline" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51) !important; font-size: 0.65em; line-height: 1.65em; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><span class="label">Published:</span>&nbsp;22 August 2010 02:29 AM</div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div></div></div><div class="DMNReferWrapper" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-left: 10px; width: 302px;"></div><div class="wrappingContent " style="overflow: visible;"><div class="widget storyContent article body" style="margin-top: 20px; overflow: visible;"><div class="body viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-30645-BODY viziwyg-section-7930" style="overflow: visible;"><div class="entry-content" style="overflow: visible;"><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"></div><h1 class="viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-30645-TITLE viziwyg-section-7930" style="font-size: 2.1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Book review: 'The Surf Guru' by Doug Dorst</h1><div>Reviewed by Edward Nawotka for the Dallas Morning News</div><br /><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Surf Guru shows off what Doug Dorst does best, which is channel an array of lifelike voices that seem to be simultaneously of and not of this world.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Much like his debut novel, 2008's Alive in Necropolis, which featured a cast of fictional and historical characters, some who were alive and most who were dead, his latest book covers a lot of ground. There are stories about rebel armies, political candidates on a downward spiral and Latin American towns with bizarre rituals of justice. Settings range from modern-day California to 19th-century France.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">In the title story, a dying "Surf Guru" sits on the deck of his house, drinking Chianti out of a coffee mug and watching as surfers navigate the nearby waves. He notes that most of the surfers are donning his namesake GOO-ROO-brand surf gear, save for a few iconoclasts who opt for that of his competitors, Pacific Skin and LoweRider; he also muses on his life.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The story is broken into sections that vary in length from a single sentence - "Some say the Surf Guru controls the tides" - to several paragraphs, and the tone alternates between quirky, disengaged philosophizing (on the metaphorical meaning of hats, for example) to more urgent matters including disease, divorce and the demise of his company. The story masterfully mimics the ebb and flow, ripple and crash of the waves themselves.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Austin is the setting for "Dinaburg's Cake," about a woman who runs a high-end custom-cake business out of her home. When she loses a lavish commission for a wedding to take place at the Four Seasons Hotel, she finds herself increasingly critical of her seemingly disconnected husband and her children, one of whom has the disturbing nervous tic of pulling hair from her head. Yet after a freak accident at a birthday party involving a piñata, a baseball bat and someone's face, she realizes that her life should be appreciated for what it is, and not what she thought she wanted it to be.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Dorst, a professor of creative writing at St. Edward's University in Austin, is clearly a great student himself. One story, "Splitters," carries a subtitle, "H.A. Quilcock's Profiles in Botany: A Lost Manuscript Restored," and offers a fictionalized portrait of the work of one Hartford Anderton Quilcock, a troublesome 19th- and early 20th-century academic, who offers a series of quirky portraits of botanists - all heavily footnoted. It reads like a mash-up of Donald Barthelme and David Foster Wallace.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Another, "What Is Mine Will Know My Face," about a New Jersey florist delivery driver who discovers his best friend's girl is cheating, begins with the line, "I drove Trace to the hospital the day they tried to fix his eye," which immediately brings to mind the matter-of-fact tone of Denis Johnson's famous story "Emergency," which features a man with a hunting knife stuck in his eye.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Trace appears in another story, "Vikings," as a drifter (his girl having left him for a bench-warming New York Yankee) who finds himself marooned in a town in the Mojave Desert while on his way to Alaska. When Trace is handed an infant by a meth addict, he and his friend join a gay hustler and head with the baby to a bar, only to end up in a very bad way in a seedy hotel. This kind of intense "dirty realism" would do a younger Richard Ford proud.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">None of this detracts from Dorst's originality. It merely underscores the company he keeps. He has delivered a collection that is consistently enjoyable from start to finish.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Ed Nawotka is editor of PublishingPerspectives.com. He lives in Houston.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">books@dallasnews.com</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Surf Guru</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Stories</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Doug Dorst</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">(Riverhead, $25.95)</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-26233173971536313382012-09-26T12:09:00.003-07:002012-09-26T12:09:43.738-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="widget navigation breadcrumb" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #005589; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.875em; line-height: 1.1em; margin: 0px 0px 20px; min-height: 1em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/" style="color: #005689; text-decoration: none;">Home</a>&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/" style="color: #005689; text-decoration: none;">Entertainment</a>&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/headlines/" style="color: #005689; text-decoration: none;">General Entertainment</a></div><div class="hnews hentry item" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px;"><div class="widget code html widget-editable viziwyg-section-4 inpage-widget-125411"></div><div class="widget storyContent article title" style="margin-top: 20px;"><h1 class="viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-42522-TITLE viziwyg-section-7930" style="font-size: 2.1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; 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float: right; line-height: 0 !important; margin: 0px !important; padding-right: 3px; position: relative; top: 2px; vertical-align: middle;"><span class="ArticleSocialToolsLargeText" style="display: inline-block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 32px; padding-right: 10px; vertical-align: middle;">A</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsText" style="display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: middle;">Text Size</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="large" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-up.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="small" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-down.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span></span><div style="clear: both; float: none !important;"></div></div></div><div class="widget storyContent article leadDisplay" style="margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article subtitle articleSubhead" style="margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article byline" style="margin-top: 20px;"><div class="byline"><div class=""><div style="float: left; width: 305px;"><div class="authorName" style="color: #333333; float: left; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 0px; width: 310px;">By ED NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Ed Nawotka of Houston is editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com.</div><div class="authorDateline" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51) !important; font-size: 0.65em; line-height: 1.65em; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><span class="label">Published:</span>&nbsp;06 June 2010 02:29 AM</div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div></div></div><div class="DMNReferWrapper" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-left: 10px; width: 302px;"></div><div class="wrappingContent " style="overflow: visible;"><div class="widget storyContent article body" style="margin-top: 20px; overflow: visible;"><div class="body viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-42522-BODY viziwyg-section-7930" style="overflow: visible;"><div class="entry-content" style="overflow: visible;"><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">It hasn't happened yet, but the end of the world begins under the 610 loop in Houston.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">It starts when a River Oaks housewife in tennis whites pulls over her gleaming black Denali to give a homeless man $20. That innocent encounter ends luridly, like so many of the true-crime stories that come from the nation's fourth-largest city, with the woman floating dead in her pool and the man, named Carter, sitting on death row in Huntsville.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Fast forward to 2016, when our story begins proper, and things are familiar but different: Jenna Bush is governor, gasoline is $13 a gallon, and New Orleans, destroyed by Hurricane Vanessa, has been cordoned and redubbed the Federal Industrial District of New Orleans. It's a giant petrochemical factory surrounded by flooded, polluted flatlands. The country is still in the midst of the "War on Terr-rah" and has suffered several new attacks, including "The Mall of America Massacre," in which 300 holiday shoppers were slain by Iranian jihadists.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">A pair of FBI agents, Wolgast and Doyle, have given Carter an offer he can't refuse: a pardon in exchange for his agreement to become the 12th candidate in a special weapons program being developed in a secret facility in Colorado. The program's goal is to produce a breed of vampiric super-soldiers, a new Manhattan Project, that promises to usher in an era of Pax Americana. Meanwhile, in Memphis, a refugee nun from Sierra Leone takes a 6-year-old girl named Amy to the zoo, where the animals react as if Amy is speaking to them. Wolgast and Doyle are dispatched to pick up the girl, who is another candidate for the program.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Naturally, this being a government project and all, things don't quite go as planned.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Two years later, much of the world is dead. Or undead, as the case may be. Ninety years after that, humanity is represented by a few lone survivors, who must all go on an epic journey to save the world.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">That's all that should really be said. To give much more away would ruin much of what is going to be one of the singular beach-reading pleasures of the next several years. This fat, 700-page book combines some of the best elements of some of your favorite books and movies, from the Bible, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Stephen King's The Stand to 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and Children of Men.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">There's even something of Lonesome Dove in it. The early settings are in Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, and it eventually settles in Oregon and California. This is a Western through and through - animal husbandry is an important element, for instance.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">That its author, Justin Cronin, holds the same teaching position at Rice University in Houston that McMurtry once held isn't an accident. While he doesn't have a Pulitzer Prize, he does have a PEN/Hemingway award for his debut book of short stories, Mary and O'Neil, in 2001.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">You may be thinking, "Gah! Not another vampire book." And you may have heard that Cronin was paid around $4 million for the book and two more to follow - The Passage is the first of a trilogy - and that Fox 2000 and Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions paid an additional $1.75 million for the movie rights. Indeed, The Passage is great entertainment.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Techies will love the technical and procedural details Cronin offers about this new dystopian civilization's workings; parents will be drawn in by the various domestic dramas and the "child-in-peril storyline." What's more, it is refreshingly free of the schlocky, fetishistic sexualization of vampires that mars several other popular works in the genre. (Guilty: Anne Rice. Guilty: Stephenie Meyer.)</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Passage is the type of big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that light keeps vampires away.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">If the book has one fault, it's that the characters, fighting for their lives in this quasi-militaristic world, tend to blend together and remain somewhat faceless before dying and being quickly replaced with others, like soldiers in a war.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">As for Houston, well, when the end comes, the city gets the last laugh. The thinly veiled Joel Osteen stand- in, "Houston Mayor Barry Wooten, best-selling author and former head of Holy Splendour Bible Church, the nation's largest," declares the city "a Gateway to Heaven" and urges residents and refugees from elsewhere in the state to gather at Houston's Reliant Stadium to prepare for "our ascension to the throne of the Lord, not as monsters but as men and women of God."</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Take that, Dallas!</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Ed Nawotka of Houston is editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">books@dallasnews.com</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Passage</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Justin Cronin</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">(Ballantine Books, $26)</div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-32263274240692645712012-09-26T12:09:00.001-07:002012-09-26T12:09:21.747-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="widget storyContent article title" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; margin-top: 20px;"><h1 class="viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-406317-TITLE viziwyg-section-7993" style="font-size: 2.1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">Year in Review: Books trends that got our attention</h1></div><div class="widget pageTools basic widget-editable viziwyg-section-4 inpage-widget-256928" style="background-color: white; 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float: right; line-height: 0 !important; margin: 0px !important; padding-right: 3px; position: relative; top: 2px; vertical-align: middle;"><span class="ArticleSocialToolsLargeText" style="display: inline-block; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 32px; padding-right: 10px; vertical-align: middle;">A</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsText" style="display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: middle;">Text Size</span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="large" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-up.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span>&nbsp;<span class="ArticleSocialToolsIcons" style="display: inline-block; height: 16px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img class="changeTextSize" id="small" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/skins/dmn/gfx/size-down.png" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></span></span><div style="clear: both; float: none !important;"></div></div></div><div class="widget storyContent article leadDisplay" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article subtitle articleSubhead" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; margin-top: 20px;"></div><div class="widget storyContent article byline" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; margin-top: 20px;"><div class="byline"><div class="Wires"><div style="float: left; width: 305px;"><div class="authorName" style="color: #333333; float: left; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 0px; width: 310px;">By EDWARD NAWOTKA</div><div class="authorCredit" style="color: #333333; float: left; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 0px; width: 310px;">Special Contributor</div><div class="authorDateline" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51) !important; font-size: 0.65em; line-height: 1.65em; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"><span class="label">Published:</span>&nbsp;16 December 2011 05:42 PM</div></div><div style="clear: both;"></div></div></div></div><div class="DMNReferWrapper" style="background-color: white; clear: right; float: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; margin-left: 10px; width: 302px;"></div><div class="wrappingContent " style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; overflow: visible;"><div class="widget storyContent article body" style="margin-top: 20px; overflow: visible;"><div class="body viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-406317-BODY viziwyg-section-7993" style="overflow: visible;"><div class="entry-content" style="overflow: visible;"><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Looking back, 2011 will be remembered as the year when publishing was turned on its head.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Self-published authors, once the pariahs of the book business, gained credibility — outselling many established names and giving hope to would-be authors everywhere. Borders, the second-biggest bookstore chain in the country, went under, signaling a shift in priority from print books to e-books.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Making headlines during the year were:</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Steve Jobs:</strong>&nbsp;In 2010, Steve Jobs promised to revolutionize reading with the introduction of Apple’s iPad; in 2011, concurrent with his passing, he became the subject of possibly the bestselling book of the year: Walter Isaacson’s 656-page, $35 biography&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Steve Jobs</em>. Jobs knew in life — and now in death — how to wow an audience and get people to open their wallets.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Self-publishing:</strong>&nbsp;Prior to 2011, the road to becoming an author was arduous, requiring a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck. Self-publishing was seen as the option of last resort. Now, dirt-cheap self-published books are topping bestseller lists at Amazon.com and elsewhere. In 2010, there were 133,036 self-published titles released, and when the numbers come in for this year, that figure is expected to double or triple. It’s said that everyone has at least one book in them, and now we can buy them.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Borders:</strong>&nbsp;But where? In 2001, Borders had more than 2,000 bookstores in the United States, 50 overseas, and earned more than $3 billion in annual revenue. In July this year, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company went bankrupt, shuttering hundreds of stores (including several in Dallas), putting 10,000 people out of work and leaving book lovers everywhere bereft.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Barnes &amp; Noble:</strong>&nbsp;The growing popularity of e-books is credited with killing Borders (note: there was a lot of human error involved as well). Determined not to suffer the same fate, Barnes &amp; Noble aggressively pushed e-books and put its Nook devices front-and-center in their stores. Throughout 2011, they beat archrival Amazon to market with several innovative devices, including updated touch-screen e-ink devices and color Android tablets. The company, previously seen by many as a villain blamed for the closing of many independent bookstores around the country (yes, including Dallas), became the last, best hope for those who like to browse and buy physical books in real stores.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Amazon:</strong>&nbsp;Ask booksellers who the biggest bully is now and they will likely tell you it is our “friends in Seattle,” as Amazon has euphemistically come to be known. The Voldemort of the book business not only controls an estimated 60 percent of e-book sales and a significant chunk of print book sales, it has now become a publisher, establishing imprints for everything from romance novels to children’s picture books and putting out more than 100 books of its own in 2011. It is even competing with the big houses in New York to pay top dollar for authors, as it did when it ponied up $800,000 to acquire a memoir by the film director Penny Marshall.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Amanda Hocking and John Locke:</strong>&nbsp;That generous sum falls well short of the reported $2 million paid by St. Martin’s Press to Amanda Hocking, the 27-year-old Minnesota author who became a hot commodity when her series of inexpensive, self-published novels about attractive magical trolls became a phenomenon. She joined thriller writer John Locke as the second self-published scribe to sell more than 1 million e-books on Amazon.com, alongside mega-bestsellers James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Stephen King does Dallas:</strong>&nbsp;Speaking of mega-bestsellers, Stephen King — who helped Jeff Bezos launch the original Amazon Kindle and is now pimping for Barnes &amp; Noble’s Nook — gave Dallas a special gift this year:&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">11/22/63</em>, a 1,000-page novel in which a young man travels back in time to try to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy. King delighted big crowds with appearances in Dallas and McKinney.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Time-traveling Texas debuts:</strong>&nbsp;Era hopping time-travel also featured in fascinating debuts written by Texans, yet set “abroad” in different eras, such as screenwriter Jenny Wingfield’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Homecoming of Samuel Lake</em>, a powerful family drama about 1950s Arkansas; David E. Hilton’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Kings of Colorado</em>, a book that was equal parts Annie Proulx and Larry McMurtry set in Colorado in the 1960s; and Ernest Cline’s<em style="overflow: visible;">Ready Player One</em>, which challenged readers to brush up on their 1980s pop culture while navigating a future dystopia.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Tried-and-true Texans:</strong>&nbsp;Several seasoned Texas fiction writers returned with new books this year, including Amanda Eyre Ward’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Close Your Eyes</em>, Sarah Bird’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Gap Year</em>, Bruce Machart’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Men in the Making</em>, Jeff Abbott’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Adrenaline</em>, Joe R. Landsdale’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky</em>, Dominic Smith’s<em style="overflow: visible;">Bright and Distant Shores</em>, Stephen Harrigan’s&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Remember Ben Clayton</em>, David Liss’&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Twelfth Enchantment</em>&nbsp;and David Lindsey’s mystery&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Pacific Heights</em>&nbsp;— his first book in several years — which was mysteriously published under the pen name Paul Harper.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Books as movies:</strong>&nbsp;Another major Texas novelist worth noting is Rick Riordan, who continued to extend his blockbuster series of books about the children of mythical demigods with the October publication of&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Son of Neptune</em>. While we won’t be enjoying the second installment of the film adaptation of his Percy Jackson and the Olympians series,&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Sea of Monsters</em>, until 2013, this year did see the finale of the most popular (and profitable) book-to-film adaptation ever made,&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2</em>, which took in an astonishing $1.33 billion worldwide. Which, no matter how you look at it, would buy more self-published books for your Kindle than you could possibly read in a lifetime, or maybe a million lifetimes, depending on your taste.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><em style="overflow: visible;">Edward Nawotka is the editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com. He lives in Houston.</em></div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">books@dallasnews.com</div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-4926252105842362492012-09-26T12:08:00.001-07:002012-09-26T12:08:27.472-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="wrappingContent " style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.363636016845703px; overflow: visible;"><div class="widget storyContent article body" style="margin-top: 20px; overflow: visible;"><div class="body viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-697533-BODY viziwyg-section-7993" style="overflow: visible;"><div class="entry-content" style="overflow: visible;"><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"></div><h1 class="viziwyg-editable viziwyg-field-697533-TITLE viziwyg-section-7993" style="font-size: 2.1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">‘Telephone Road,’ by Austin fiction writer Thomas Derr, often reads like a memoir</h1><div><br /></div><div>Reviewed by Edward Nawotka for the Dallas Morning News (September 2012)</div><br /><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The stories in Thomas Derr’s debut collection,<em style="overflow: visible;">Telephone Road</em>, often read like a memoir. Not surprising, given his pedigree as a graduate of the University of Iowa writing workshop. Derr’s stories echo the tone of the program’s longtime director, the late Frank Conroy, whose book&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Stop-Time</em>&nbsp;laid the foundation for memoirs that read like novels.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The Austin writer’s fiction — save for a few narrative flourishes — often has the ring of the truth. In “Fire Party,” Derr, who after high school served in the Navy on the aircraft carrier Enterprise, tells the story of a young man serving aboard the dry-docked Enterprise who is enlisted in a hunt for an arsonist.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The story is rich with detailed exposition of the dull duty of Navy life. But the skillful sentence building is what holds your attention, as Derr deftly counterbalances the leaden diction of the military with surprising syntactical twists.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">One sentence reads: “At 2300 hours on a duty day I sat in the Ventilation Repair Division Space — a hangar deck level space in the bow of the ship, in a passage called the tunnel — reading an unabridged dictionary, writing out word lists, increasing my working vocabulary.” I bet you didn’t see that last bit coming.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">While Derr exhibits great skill with words, it is also his flaw, as several of his stories center around cerebral discussions of the nature of memory, possession and nostalgia.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">The opening story, “Housebreakers,” is based on a clever premise, in which a man watches with neighbors who have let strangers pay for the privilege of destroying their house across the street. But as the tale devolves into a pot-fueled philosophical rambling, it leaves little room to deal with the denouement: the sudden appearance of a corpse. .</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">In “Clutter,” a man drives to his ex-girlfriend’s house to help her dispose of a dead deer that she found on her lawn, only to find himself overtaken by memories of their life together. When, by the end of the story, he is “gripped by a wistful sensation, a gathering proximity to remote things,” it leaves the reader longing for some explanation.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">But these faults are not entirely the writer’s;&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Telephone Road</em>&nbsp;would have benefited from a better editor. The book was published by Colgate University Press, a company that took a hiatus from 1994 until 2008, and since its return has put out just seven books, of which&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Telephone Road</em>&nbsp;is only the second work of fiction.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">A more attentive editor — Frank Conroy, maybe? — would have fixed the otherwise fine story, “Pronto Stop,” in which a house in Houston is alternately described as “five miles” and “just blocks” away, and questioned whether 16-year-old delinquents would casually reference Melville and P.G. Wodehouse.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">All told, Derr is undeniably a talented writer. In the collection’s most memorable story, “The Sleeper,” a family bonds by engaging in impromptu drag races on Houston’s Westheimer Boulevard, with the kids bouncing in the back seat. When the parents separate, the father tries to redeem himself by taking his wife for a race in his newly souped-up ride, only to find himself outclassed.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">It’s a wild, unexpected tear of a story, one that shows Derr is on his way, even if he hasn’t quite reached his destination.</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><em style="overflow: visible;">Edward Nawotka is the editor-in-chief of Publishingperspectives.com.</em></div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">books@dallasnews.com</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Telephone Road</div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Thomas Derr</strong></div><div style="font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">(Colgate University Press,$18.95)</div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-68914911806493683182012-09-26T12:07:00.003-07:002012-09-26T12:07:21.104-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">"In Between Days" by Andrew Porter</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Reviewed by Edward Nawotka for the Dallas Morning News (September 2012)</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">It is the mid-2000s and the Hardings of Houston — a white, upper-middle-class Texas family — are sent reeling when their daughter, Chloe, returns home after being kicked out of her East Coast college trailed by a felonious scandal, detectives and an Indian-American boyfriend intent on fleeing with her across the border.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">This isn’t the Hardings’ only trouble. Family patriarch Elson, a fading-star minimalist architect, is sliding into booze and boorishness after his divorce from his wife of 25 years, Cadence, who is alone and psychologically unmoored in a big house in Montrose. Meanwhile, their eldest child, Richard, a recent Rice graduate and poet, fights the urge to take himself seriously by submitting to the “anesthetizing freedom” of the gay party scene.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">When Chloe suddenly disappears, each tries to rally to her aid, but they make a series of decisions that, “clouded by love,” only exacerbate the situation to the point where it remains uncertain whether they can ever fully recover.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">This is Andrew Porter’s first novel and, as a portrait of a modern American nuclear family in crisis, it is a deft one. He weaves in the full tapestry of contemporary life and its complications: male menopause, desperate housewives, extended adolescence and race relations in post-9/11 America.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">That Porter, author of the acclaimed collection of short stories&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">The Theory of Light and Matter</em>&nbsp;and a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, set his book in Houston is all but immaterial to the plot. It is placeholder of sorts — one could not, as James Joyce was fond of saying of&nbsp;<em style="overflow: visible;">Ulysses</em>, navigate the city by its pages — and it could have easily been replaced by any large American metropolis. And this is a shame, since to put it frankly, Houston, America’s fourth-largest city, has rarely been exploited by fiction writers. True-crime writers? Yes, but not by novelists.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">At one point Chloe notes, “To them,” referring to her friends at college, “Houston represented big hair and cowboy hats and conservative politics” (which sounds much more like the clichés about Dallas-Fort Worth than Houston, actually), but to her it was a “magical place.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t come across in the pages of the book.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">That said, the fact that Houston serves as such a bland backdrop may be intentional. The characters take the foreground and they, Porter seems to be saying, are much like us — or at least the type of reader looking to pay good money for a mildly suspenseful novel about well-off, well-meaning, mostly white people in crisis.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Porter’s characters serve as tropes for things that have defined the middle class: work as identity, education as opportunity, marriage as an institution. Each character is challenged, in the same way that those societal foundations are being challenged. And in this way, the novel is an accurate reflection of our larger (reading) society as it stands today.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">That and, well, a certain segment of Texans — who as we all know really are not so dissimilar from people everywhere else.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">Edward Nawotka is the editor-in-chief of Publishingperspectives.com.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">books@dallasnews.com</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">In Between Days</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><strong style="overflow: visible;">Andrew Porter</strong></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 5px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">(Knopf, $24.95)</div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-54969576351216173692012-09-26T12:06:00.001-07:002012-09-26T12:08:50.545-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><div class="itemHeader" style="background-color: #f0f0f0; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 9.600000381469727px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding-bottom: 5px; width: 466px;"><h2 class="itemTitle" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51) !important; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 26.399999618530273px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">An Unforgettable War&nbsp;</h2></div><div class="grid_4 alpha" style="background-color: #f0f0f0; display: inline; float: left; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 9.600000381469727px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 5px; position: relative; width: 470px;"><div class="itemBody" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="itemAuthor" style="color: #999999; display: block; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.4em;"></span><br /><div class="grid_2 alpha" style="display: inline; float: left; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 5px; position: relative; width: 230px;"><span class="itemAuthor" style="color: #999999; display: block; font-size: 10px; line-height: 1.4em;">by Ed Nawotka (Texas Observer)</span></div><span class="itemAuthor" style="color: #999999; 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margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;">For nearly a decade publishers have been filling bookstores with tomes about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. First came those from the embedded journalists; then the officers and politicians who led the wars, whether in Washington or on the battlefield; then the survivors, snipers, SEALS and soldiers with Silver Stars. These books will be quickly forgotten. Save for a few non-fiction titles about war, the books that linger longest are those by writers who transformed the events of the day with their imaginations.</div><div style="line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;">Poets in particular have proven expert at capturing the emotion and terror of war. Think of Whitman writing about the Civil War, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon on the trenches of World War I, Auden and Eliot on the horror of World War II. Regarding our recent wars, one thinks of Brian Turner's 2005 volume&nbsp;<em>Here, Bullet</em>, a visceral manifestation, in poetry no less, of the life of a modern soldier.</div><div style="line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;">Now we have&nbsp;<em>The Yellow Birds</em>&nbsp;by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran and Michener Fellow in poetry at the University of Texas at Austin. Powers' novel relays the story of two Virginia boys—21-year-old Pvt. Bartle and 18-year-old Pvt. Murphy—from basic training at Fort Dix to the battlegrounds of Al Tafar, Iraq, and its stateside aftermath. Murphy ("Murph") never returns after a horrifying tragedy.</div><div style="line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;">In Powers' depiction of military life in and out of war, he punctuates Wordsworthian passages of poetic stream-of-consciousness about nature and human nature with Hemingwayesque observations. (A vaporized body is described as "a perfect bloody angel made of dust.")</div><div style="line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;">But what does it say about war today? Well, war is a "morbid geometry," and this novel delivers a close approximation of the mental anguish and loss that war inflicts on the sensitive and the barbaric alike.&nbsp;<em>The Yellow Birds</em>&nbsp;reads like one man's raw version of the truth, and you feel not only for, but with Pvt. Bartle. This does not make for easy or particularly enjoyable reading, but it is full of passionate intensity. Exactly what might give this particular book about war a chance to last.</div><div style="line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em !important; padding: 0px;"><em>Ed Nawotka is the Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives.com, a trade journal for the international book business. He lives in Houston</em>.</div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-86365846459207115402010-03-08T02:38:00.000-08:002010-03-08T02:40:37.080-08:00Book review: 'The Possessed' by Elif BatumanEd Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com<br /><br />Russian literary scholars aren't known for their sense of humor, unless they're Elif Batuman. Her new book, The Possessed, a collection of essays that can best be described as a series of academic misadventure stories, is possibly the best thing to come out of a graduate program in recent years.<br /><br />Describing a conference about the writer Isaac Babel (author of The Red Cavalry) at Stanford University, where Batuman did her graduate work and now teaches, she notes that "some Russian people are skeptical or even offended when foreigners claim an interest in Russian literature." This parochial attitude can easily turn into obtuseness, as when a scholar suggests that Batuman would never be able to fully understand Babel because of his "specifically Jewish alienation."<br /><br />To which she replies: "Right, as a six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman growing up in New Jersey, I cannot possibly know as much about alienation as you, a short American Jew." To which the man replies: "So you see the problem."<br /><br />Batuman rarely confronts such oddities head on. She usually lets people and events speak for themselves – often hilariously. On a trip to St. Petersburg for The New Yorker, where she's gone to visit the re-creation of an 18th-century palace made of ice, she's instructed by her editor to "interview the guy who made the doorknobs." Later, the builder of the ice palace asks, "What doorknobs?"<br /><br />But Batuman isn't merely setting up straw men so she can appear more intelligent. She wears her knowledge lightly, while at the same time still conveying her passion for the books and the people who made them. She's also not shy about discussing the vagaries of academic life, such as hustling for grant money.<br /><br />In a chapter titled "Who Killed Leo Tolstoy?" she wants grant money to help pay for a trip to a conference at Tolstoy's estate. To qualify for an extra $1,500, she devises a theory that Tolstoy was murdered. Her academic department doesn't buy it, but she makes the trip nevertheless, losing her luggage along the way. "Air travel is like death: everything is taken from you," she quips.<br /><br />As she is forced to wear the same flannel shirt, sweat pants and flip-flops, the collected Tolstoy scholars come to believe she's a committed Tolstoyan – that is, a follower who's vowed to return to a peasant lifestyle, shunning materialism for a life of work and simplicity. It doesn't help that she wanders the grounds "looking for clues" to Tolstoy's "murder." Ultimately, she determines: "The flies buzz across generations; I know they know, but they won't tell me."<br /><br />Throughout the book, she conveys a graduate seminar's worth of scholarship in many of the great Russian authors and a few who are not so great, plus some who aren't even technically Russian. (She has a wonderful, moving three-part story interspersed throughout the book about a summer she spent trying to learn Uzbek.)<br /><br />By writing about her personal experiences with such charm, Batuman manages to make literature accessible in a way few critics can: She loves the Russians, and because, over the course of the book, you come to love her a little bit, you come to love the Russians as well. She's an example of not just how to appreciate literature, but how to live life through literature – without losing yourself.<br /><br />Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of PublishingPerspectives.com.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-11373831515203768022010-01-14T10:46:00.001-08:002010-01-14T10:47:30.358-08:00Book review: 'Happy' by Alex LemonDallas Morning News, Sunday, January 10, 2010<br /><br /><div>We are, as a culture, obsessed with medical dramas. Just look at the history of television and you'll see dozens of shows based in hospitals, from St. Elsewhere to ER to House.<br /><br />And while plenty of books have been written about medicine from the doctor's perspective, far fewer have come from the patients. Rarer still are those written by men. One thinks of William Styron's Darkness Visible, about his descent into depression; last year's Guts by Robert Nylen, about his battle with cancer; or Tony Judt's recent work for the New York Review of Books about suffering from ALS. Alex Lemon's Happy is a welcome addition to that short bookshelf.<br /><br />The title is itself deliberately deceptive. "Happy" is the author's nickname from when he was a foul-mouthed, hard-partying catcher for the baseball team at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. As we meet him at the start of the book, he thinks: "I must have drunk a bottle of Drano last night, snorted a bag of glass, and leapt open-armed from the top of the stairs. A tree. A roof. The moon." His head is "fuzzy," he can't focus, he has vertigo so bad that he falls over getting dressed, and his vision is blurry and bounces so badly that he can't catch a baseball.<br /><br />An MRI reveals that Happy has a vascular malformation in his brain and that it has been hemorrhaging.<br /><br />What follows is Lemon's chronicle of living with the ailment, with the help of friends, lovers, family and lots of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. When that proves impossible, he decides to have the malformation operated on. The problem is on the brain stem, and the surgery puts him at risk of death. Lemon's description of his erratic behavior in the face of his fear – leading up to the surgery and during his recovery – is gripping, visceral and moving.<br /><br />Lemon's tales of debauchery and sheer panic make for as compelling a story as others by young men who party too much and put themselves in peril, such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (however disingenuous) and Brad Land's Goat. The book is full of memorable observations, such as his description of a neurologist's exam room and its row upon row of plastic models of brains that "line and stack the shelves like championship basketballs" and moments of honest pain, such as when he uses an X-Acto knife "like a toothpick" to slice his gums when he chews tobacco while anticipating his surgery.<br /><br />Needless to say, Lemon survived; he now teaches English at Texas Christian University. In this fine memoir, he touches briefly on at least one more subject – his abuse as a child at the hands of a teenage cousin – that would merit further autobiography. If he finds he has the strength (for he still suffers some from his illness) and emotional resilience to write, it too would be welcome.<br /><br />Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com.<br /><br />books@dallasnews.com</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-69285064084742765552009-12-27T19:07:00.000-08:002009-12-27T19:08:43.324-08:002009 Year in Review from the Dallas Morning News<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 13px; "><span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold; font-size: 11px; ">By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News<br /></span></b></span><span class="vitstorybody" style="margin-top: 5px; "><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">The year 2009 has been described as the Year of Anxiety, so it should come as no surprise that the books published in 2009 reflected scary stuff – from government conspiracy theories to zombies and, natch, vampires.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">In Texas, writers both living and deceased made their mark on the national literary scene. Meanwhile, booksellers were battling it out for your discretionary dollar by making books cheap, cheap, cheap. All told, 2009 was a great year to be a book lover.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">Herewith, our top 10 literary events of 2009:</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><div class="biimage" style="float: right; margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 8px; display: inline; position: relative; top: 5px; padding-bottom: 3px; width: 175px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 3px; "><img width="175" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/12-09/1223book.jpg" title="The Lost Symbol" alt="AP Photo " style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; " /><div class="bithumbcaption" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; "><div class="bithumbcredit" style="text-align: right; padding-right: 4px; font-weight: normal; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9px; ">AP Photo</div><strong>Dan Brown's <em>The Lost Symbol</em></strong></div></div><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">1. <b><i>The Lost Symbol:</i></b> Dan Brown's follow-up to his global best-seller <i><a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/The_Da_Vinci_Code" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">The Da Vinci Code</a><span></span></i> was the one book everyone wanted to read. And Brown didn't disappoint. Trading the mysteries of Christianity for the mysteries of American history, Brown titillated his fans with conspiracy theories dating back to the Founding Fathers. Brown's publisher, Doubleday, printed 5 million copies to start, and<a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Amazon.com" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Amazon.com</a><span> </span>readers downloaded it faster than any other book in the retailer's history. It was just what most people needed in a tough year: a bit of frivolous distraction.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">2. <b><i>Going Rogue:</i></b> Love her or hate her, <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Sarah_Palin" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Sarah Palin</a><span> </span>is hard to ignore. After failing to become the first female vice-president, the lady from Alaska moved home, quit her job, and (with help from writer Lynn Vincent) penned this book, which has taken her from Oprah to Plano – where her reading at Legacy Books drew more than 1,000 supporters, who snapped up all available tickets in less than two days.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">3. <b><i>The Last Olympian:</i></b> Perhaps the most popular book to come out of Texas this year was the finale of Rick Riordan's <i>Percy Jackson and the Olympians </i>series. Published in May, the novel entranced teens, who raced through its 400 pages to learn the fate of Percy (a son of Poseidon) and his friends as they fight an army of monsters to get to the portal to Mount Olympus (which is on the top of the Empire State Building). Look for Riordan's popularity to soar as the movie adaptation of the first in the series, <i>The Lightning Thief</i>, hits theaters in February.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><div class="biblockmore" style="float: right; clear: right; border-top-width: 1px !important; border-right-width: 1px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; border-left-width: 1px !important; border-top-style: solid !important; border-right-style: solid !important; border-bottom-style: solid !important; border-left-style: solid !important; border-top-color: rgb(167, 167, 167) !important; border-right-color: rgb(167, 167, 167) !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(167, 167, 167) !important; border-left-color: rgb(167, 167, 167) !important; margin-top: 3px; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 8px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; width: 266px; background-image: url(http://cache.dallasnews.com/images/ice3/biblockmore_bg.gif) !important; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat !important; "><div class="bilabel" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; display: block; font-size: 12px !important; font-weight: bold !important; padding-top: 1px; padding-right: 2px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 12px !important; text-decoration: none; text-align: left !important; text-indent: 0px; background-color: transparent !important; color: rgb(66, 65, 71) !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); height: 20px !important; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; line-height: 18px !important; ">Also Online</div><div class="biblockheads" style="padding-top: 0px !important; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 3px !important; padding-left: 5px; margin-top: 0px !important; margin-right: 5px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><p style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px; color: rgb(40, 55, 88) !important; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; background-position: 0px 3px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><img src="http://www.dallasnews.com/images/ice3/icons/more.gif" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; display: inline; " /> <a href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/page/year_in_review" target="blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">More Year in Review coverage</a></p><p style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px; color: rgb(40, 55, 88) !important; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; background-position: 0px 3px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><img src="http://www.dallasnews.com/images/ice3/icons/more.gif" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; display: inline; " /> <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/includes/ice3/dn/ent/endofdecade2000svotes.html" target="blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Vote for your Decade Best</a></p><p style="font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-indent: 0px; color: rgb(40, 55, 88) !important; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; background-position: 0px 3px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><img src="http://www.dallasnews.com/images/ice3/icons/blog.gif" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; display: inline; " /> <b>Blog:</b> <a href="http://booksblog.dallasnews.com/" target="blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Books</a></p></div></div><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">4. <b>Attention for Texas authors:</b>Austinite John Pipkin, former executive director of the Writer's League of Texas, picked up the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize for his book<i>Woodsburner</i>, which depicts the day <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Henry_David_Thoreau" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Henry David Thoreau</a><span> </span>nearly burned down the forest surrounding Walden Pond. And the late Houston novelist and short-story writer <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Donald_Barthelme" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Donald Barthelme</a><span> </span>finally got the biography he deserved in the form of Tracy Daugherty's <i>Hiding Man </i>–something that should firmly establish Barthelme's place high in the American literary canon.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">5. <b>Two top tens:</b> A pair of books firmly rooted in the Lone Star State – <i>Lit </i>by <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Mary_Karr" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Mary Karr</a><span> </span>and <i>Half Broke Horses </i>by <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Jeannette_Walls" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Jeannette Walls</a><span> </span>– landed on the <i><a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/New_York_Times_Company" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">New York Times</a><span> </span></i>Book Review's list of the top ten books of 2009. In <i>Lit</i>, Karr, who hails from Groves, Texas, offers a chronicle of her descent into <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Alcoholism" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">alcoholism</a><span> </span>and unexpected conversion to Catholicism. Walls' <i>Half Broke Horses </i>is a fictional account of the life of her West Texas grandmother.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">In a year with so many A-list authors, from <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Barbara_Kingsolver" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Barbara Kingsolver</a><span> </span>to<a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Margaret_Atwood" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Margaret Atwood</a><span></span>, putting out "big books," it's nice affirmation to know that lives lived in this part of the country are as interesting to a national audience as are those lived in Manhattan or Brooklyn, where far too many books seem to be set.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><div class="biimage" style="float: right; margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 8px; display: inline; position: relative; top: 5px; padding-bottom: 3px; width: 175px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 3px; "><img width="175" src="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/12-09/1223book3.jpg" title="Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" alt="AP Photo " style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; " /><div class="bithumbcaption" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10px; font-weight: normal; "><div class="bithumbcredit" style="text-align: right; padding-right: 4px; font-weight: normal; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9px; ">AP Photo</div><strong>Seth Grahame Smith's <em>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</em></strong></div></div><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">6. <b>Zombie-mania:</b> Something must have eaten book buyers' brains, as avid readers put <i>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies </i>onto the best-seller list. The parody by Seth Grahame-Smith injected the undead into Jane Austen's classic Regency romance and proved astonishingly popular. It also established a new genre of "enhanced" classics which now includes <i>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters</i>, <i>The Adventures of Huck Finn and Zombie Jim</i> and others.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">7. <b>Christians vs. vampires:</b> It wasn't long ago when the <i>Left Behind</i>books, a series of Christian novels depicting the "end of days," rivaled<a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Harry_Potter" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Harry Potter</a><span> </span>for the top of the best-sellers list. The times have changed, and there was no surer sign than the failure of the much-hyped Christian Book Expo held in March at the Dallas Convention Center. Organizers had expected 10,000 to 15,000 people, but only 1,500 attended.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">In contrast, more than 3,000 fans of Stephenie Meyer's vampire-romance <i>Twilight </i>series paid $255 each to attend the inaugural TwiCon at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel in August. The event was so successful, organizers are moving it to Las Vegas and Toronto for 2010.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">8. <b>Mayborn conference:</b> One book event in the area that was an undeniable success was the fifth annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, held in July in Grapevine. Hundreds gathered to hear talks from A-list literary figures including <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Paul_Theroux" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Paul Theroux</a><span></span>, <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Ira_Glass" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Ira Glass</a><span> </span>and Alma Guillermoprieto. Interesting, focused and efficiently run by the administrators from the journalism school at the University of North Texas, The Mayborn can be ranked among the best writers' conferences in the United States.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">9. <b>Book price war:</b> In October, Amazon.com and <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Wal-Mart" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Wal-Mart</a><span> </span>reduced the price of some hardcover bestsellers, including John Grisham's <i><a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Ford_Motor_Company" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Ford</a><span></span>Country</i>, to $9 or less. The low-low prices didn't last, but it underscored how, in no point in history, have there never been more books available to so many people for so little.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">10. <b>E-books gain popularity:</b> It took a decade, but e-books are finally catching on. The introduction of new, easier-to-use reading software for smart phones, such as the <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/iPhone" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">iPhone</a><span></span>, and new devices, such as Barnes &amp; Noble's recently-introduced Nook, have made them all the more appealing.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; ">Amazon.com's <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Amazon_Kindle" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Kindle</a><span> </span>still reigns supreme, with many of the books priced at $9.99. Amazon CEO <a class="DL-topic-highlighted" href="http://topics.dallasnews.com/topic/Jeff_Bezos" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Jeff Bezos</a><span> </span>now says that the company sells e-books to print books at a ratio of nearly one to two; he is confidently predicting the day will soon be here when Amazon will sell more electronic books than physical books. Keep an eye on two Austin-based firms – LibreDigital, a company that converts books to digital formats, and BooksOnBoard, one of the biggest e-book retailers in the United States. Both are innovators in the field of digital publishing.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; font-size: 1.1em; "><i>Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives.com.</i></p></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-35920769053618128752009-09-30T09:53:00.001-07:002009-09-30T09:53:51.640-07:00MPIBA Gets Boost from Guns, Tourists, Hype<h3>By Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 9/29/2009 1:34:00 PM</h3> <p>"Many of our stores are small, in remote or rural areas, and don't have the opportunity to travel to BEA, so the trade show is important to them," said Meghan Goel, children's book manager at BookPeople Bookstore in Austin, TX and the incoming president of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA) (who had just returned from Kenya where she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro). The annual meeting returned to Denver after shifting last year to Colorado Springs, and attracted approximately the same number of attendees as last year.</p> <p>At the association’s general meeting, executive director Lisa Knudsen praised outgoing president Andy Nettell of Arches Book Company in Moab, UT for his three years of service and his “calm” demeanor. She announced that 13 new stores had joined MPIBA since last year bringing the total number of members to 167. She admitted that the association’s finances had suffered due to last year’s market meltdown, with the association losing nearly a third of its financial reserves, some $78,000 in the stock market. “We’re still here,” said Knudsen, who added that as the market has bounced back, so has MPIBA’s finances.</p> <p>She also touted a number of marketing moves the MPIBA has recently made, including the launch of the “Reading the West” program this past June. The program selects specific titles that are relevant to the region to promote at MPIBA, each month. “The board wanted to do this because some of our members are not in the ABA [American Booksellers Association] and don’t use IndieBound.” The association has also launched a new blog at <a href="http://www.mountainsplains.org/blog/">http://www.mountainsplains.org/blog/</a>.</p> <p>In April, the MPIBA hosted the first of a planned series of “Regional Focus Meetings,” with the inaugural session held in Austin, Texas. Twenty people from 12 stores attended. Plans for 2010 include meetings to be held in Texas, most likely in Houston, as well as in Colorado, Utah, Montana and Arizona. “We’re still pinning them down, but we’ve had a lot of interest,” said BookPeople’s Goel.<br /><span><br />Additional information sessions focused on coping with the recession, with numerous booksellers reporting that they have cut staff (often by not replacing lost employees) and added additional sidelines. This being the West, and considering the incredible jump in sales of firearms since the election of President Obama, it should come as no surprise that a number of stores reported a sizable boost coming from the sales of books about firearms.</span></p> <p>That being said, there was little evidence of gun-related titles on the exhibition floor. Smaller booths from some of the major publishers -- Random House for example, had just a single table – were somewhat offset by the addition of seating next to each table, a change Knudsen said was intended to facilitate more sit down meetings for the taking of orders. Small regional publishers dominated the floor, ranging from Denver’s Flying Pen Press – a specialist in sci fi and speculative fiction -- to Mukilteo, Washington’s Basho Press, which is entirely focused on haiku gift books and was given a slot to speak at the “pick of the list” sessions.</p> <p>Hachette Book Group produced a specialist catalog of “staycation” titles for the show, a likely response to the economic crisis. The branding proved a mismatch for what booksellers – particularly in heavily touristed locals – were reporting.</p> <p>Tommie Plank of Covered Treasures Bookstore in Monument, Colo. remarked, “People are still traveling, they’re just driving a few hours, instead. Sure, people aren’t traveling to Europe and we’re not seeing as many people from the coasts, but we are seeing a lot of tourists from Colorado and surrounding states. Daiva Chesonis, book buyer for Between the Covers in Telluride, Colo. concurred, saying that one of the stores bestselling titles this summer was a Colorado driving atlas.</p> <p> As far as sales are concerned, booksellers seem to be holding steady throughout the region. Plank reported that her store’s sales were up 2% over last year, due both to continued tourist traffic and the store’s proximity to the Air Force Academy and various military bases. “We have a lot of retired military in our area and since they’re retired they can’t lose their jobs, so they’re buying just as many books as before.” Local author Jon Krakauer’s <em>Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman</em> is currently proving popular.</p> <p>Even so,“The economy has tempered expectations for the fall,” said Drew Goodman, a MPIBA board member and sales manager of the University Campus Store at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “It’s hard to tell what direction things are going to go in – is the recession over, as everyone is saying, or is this just a lull?,” said Goodman. “It’s hard to tell and there are mixed feelings out there. One thing that we know is there are a lot of big books out there for the season, it’s one of the best I can remember in a long time.” Goodman added that although his store was selling plenty of copies of <em>The Lost Symbol</em> and <em>True Compass</em>, his profits came from his ability to “make books” by hand selling. He offered Michael Cox’s <em>The Meaning of Night</em> as an example: “In August, we picked it as ‘Book of the Month’ and sold 30 copies, making it one of our bestselling titles,” he said.</p> <p>Cathy Langer of the Tattered Cover agreed, adding that it’s the “sleepers that rise to the surface” that really matter to independent stores. One book she expected to do especially well in the region is Timothy Egan’s <em>The Big Burn.</em> She’s also encouraged by the appearance of Brown, Kennedy, Krakauer, and even Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro on the fall lists. “After all the glum news this year, the hype is nice,” she said.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-17584426698693615142009-09-22T05:58:00.000-07:002009-09-22T05:59:02.075-07:00In 'Strength in What Remains,' author tells story of immigration, return to home country<p><span class="byline">By Edward Nawotka</span><br /><span class="source">SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN </span><br /> <span class="date"> Sunday, September 20, 2009 </span></p> <p>Tracy Kidder's ninth book, "Strength in What Remains," tells the story of Deogratias — called Deo — a Burundian medical student who, after fleeing his country's civil war in 1994, makes his way to New York with $200 in his pocket and speaking only French. There he squats as a homeless person in Central Park; he delivers groceries for $15 a day. </p> <p>This is before he's taken in by Charlie and Nancy Wolf, a charitable couple with a big heart and a Manhattan apartment with an extra room — one that happened to be full of books, one Kidder describes as "a room for the end of a journey of the body, but also for the continuation of a journey of the mind." They encourage Deo to pick up with his studies, and he eventually enrolls at Columbia University and, ultimately, Dartmouth Medical School. </p> <p>What initially might seem like an intriguing, if conventional, tale of transformation turns out to have a remarkable coda, as Kidder divides the book between Deo's stateside story and his return to Burundi to open a free clinic in his home town. </p> <p>Kidder spoke by phone from his home in Massachusetts. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Austin American-Statesman: You were introduced to Deo through Dr. Paul Farmer, his mentor and the subject of 'Mountains Beyond Mountains' (Kidder's 2003 book about a doctor who conducts medical missions to Haiti). Is this new book a kind of sequel to the Farmer book?</strong> </p> <p><strong>Tracy Kidder:</strong>Deo and Paul do have things in common — they are very close friends. When I first met Paul, he was already very well known in medical anthropology; he was a clinic hospital-builder par excellence. He's extraordinary. Deo had been through a crucible of war, been through a miraculous escape, come to America, learned English, but Deo is more of an ordinary person than Paul. So, in that sense, they are not sequels. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The first half of the book focuses on Deo's travails in New York, and it's not a part of the city people often see in books — homeless people living in Central Park, the service entrances to Fifth Avenue high-rises. Was that deliberate?</strong> </p> <p>First and foremost I'm a storyteller, and that's an important part of Deo's story. But that part of New York is designed to be invisible. It's very tempting if you're privileged, particularly in a place like New York, to think that the world is properly ordered or that your job is representative of who you are. When you get into a taxi and the driver has a foreign accent, you should wonder, "Where did they come from? Why they are here?" At Columbia, one of Deo's favorite writers was W.E.B. DuBois, who said, and I'm paraphrasing: To be a poor man anywhere is hard, but to be a poor man in a country of dollars is the hardest of all. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>You clearly admire Deo, and Paul Farmer for that matter, and many of your books seem to be about people pushing the limits of human potential.</strong> </p> <p>The story I've told is about courage and endurance and idealism enacted. We have to remember that we all walk around with the most complex structure in the known universe on our shoulders. Deo is pretty extraordinary. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>To what do you see this as a distinctly American story? The embodiment of the American dream?</strong> </p> <p>I think it is distinctive insofar that he's now an American citizen; he rallied a collection of American and Burundians to something he had dreamed of as a child: to go back to Burundi to create a medical system to serve the poor of whatever ethnicity. He's done that and his aims are much larger. This is one small beginning. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Would you describe the clinic Deo started?</strong> </p> <p>It's called Village Health Works and in its first year it saw 28,000 patients — from Burundi, but also from Tanzania and the Congo. A few who came weren't sick. When asked why they came, they said, "To see America." At first I thought this was a misconception, but it was true. This represents America at its best. In miniature, it's what President Obama was talking about in Ghana — African and American cooperation; it's a little instrument of peace. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>It's also a different view of Africa than one usually gets from the news, for example.</strong> </p> <p>We tend to look at Africa as a single dysfunctional country, which is nonsense. It is many dozens of countries with different problems. I am aware that Westerners only talk about the bad news from Africa, and I distrust that sentiment in Western mouths — either that or something that sounds like political correctness, and that is usually a sign that that group is really getting shafted. I wrote a book about a person who came from a place that hasn't produced a lot of good news in a century, but has a different story to tell. The real question is how to get people in the West and in the Western countries to help in an effective way. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Is that something you are trying to accomplish with your writing?</strong> </p> <p>I think the trick for people attempting to write stories about Africa is to find a way to move people, to find that this suffering person is the same as you, just like you, and in another circumstance it could have been you. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-81465502338434691492009-08-23T20:30:00.001-07:002009-08-23T20:30:55.908-07:00Review: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon<h2>'Await Your Reply' is a compelling look at a trio with similar traits whose lives intersect </h2> <p><span class="byline">By Edward Nawotka</span><br /><span class="source">SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN</span><br /> <span class="date"> Sunday, August 23, 2009 </span></p> <p>A man is hurtling along a pitch-dark highway in rural Michigan with his son shaking in pain. The son's severed hand rests on ice in a Styrofoam cooler on the seat between them. So begins Dan Chaon's fascinating second novel, "Await Your Reply," and the book never lets up from there. What follows is an unsettling, modern gothic novel about the nature of identity, one that wonders whether dozens of lesser lives can ultimately add up to one big one. It's a book, literally and figuratively, about taking lives. </p> <p>The novel shifts between three distinct storylines. There's Lucy, an 18-year-old high school graduate who runs off with her Maserati-driving history teacher to an abandoned hotel on a dried-out lake in Nebraska. There's Ryan, the young man with the severed hand, who is presumed dead after disappearing from Northwestern University, but is living with his previously absentee, pothead father in a cabin in the Michigan woods. Finally, there's 31-year-old Miles Cheshire, a drifter who works in a Cleveland magic shop and has spent much of the past decade chasing his schizophrenic twin brother, Hayden, across the country. These three characters share numerous traits: estranged or dead parents, mentally ill siblings and a fierce intelligence. Each is also part of a couple that is wholly intimate - the sentence "You're the only person in the world who still loves me" is repeated several times - but also virtual strangers. </p> <p>Inevitably, the storylines intersect, but it is Miles and Hayden's story that dominates. As "Await Your Reply" progresses, we learn that the twins began to diverge in high school, a time when Hayden's illness began to manifest itself and he started shifting between reality and a series of fantasy lives, one as an abused cabin boy on a pirate ship, who repeatedly has his throat slit, and another in which the history of the United States is mixed up with a personal mythology. As a teen, and with the help of Miles, Hayden began recording this mythology in an atlas and includes such phenomena as pyramids in North Dakota and spirit towers in arctic Canada. As an adult, the mythology would expand to include a vast global conspiracy run by the big banks, powerful lawyers and other assorted Bilderbergers. </p> <p>"Looking back," Chaon writes, "it was as if there had been two different lives that Miles was leading - one narrated by Hayden, the other the life he was living separately ..." Halfway through the novel, having chased Hayden to Omaha, Neb., Houston, and even farther afield, Miles begins to question his own grip on reality. Along with Miles, the reader is forced to question what is real and what is merely fantasy, and a kind of literary game ensues. </p> <p>Chaon sets the action almost entirely in the blank, wide-open Midwest, a characteristic that makes "Await Your Reply" all the more haunting. The characters rarely encounter other people, except in memory, and their physical isolation gives them ample opportunity to explain themselves to each other in a series of stories that are both truth and lies. It's like a literary version of Epimenides' famous paradox: Am I lying, or am I lying when I say that I never tell the truth? Teasing out the truth is one of the numerous pleasures of this fine novel. </p> <p>Another is the plot, which is surprisingly kinetic for what is largely a psychological drama. To describe what happens is likely to give too much away, but the title does offer a hint: The phrase "await your reply" is referenced as the closing line in a common spam message, specifically the kind that offers you millions of dollars provided you're willing to give your bank account and Social Security numbers to a grieving stranger in West Africa. That should give you an idea of where the book is, eventually, headed. </p> <p>Chaon's timing couldn't be better: "Await Your Reply" arrives Tuesday, a week after the Justice Department indicted three men (two of them Russian) for the theft of more than 130 million credit card numbers in what is said to be the biggest case of computer fraud and identity theft in U.S. history. If you want to get into the heads of the perpetrators, this book is a place to start. </p> <p>But saying this is a book about computer-assisted identity theft is like saying that murder can be reduced to the weapon used - each is just a tool to achieve a greater (or lesser, depending on your point of view) psychological aim. </p> <p>There are echoes and allusions to H.P. Lovecraft, Patricia Highsmith, Peter Straub, Stephen King and Shirley Jackson all over "Await Your Reply"; however, a more apt and timely comparison is with Thomas Pynchon. I'm not talking about the Cheech and Chong-meet-Raymond Chandler variety of Pynchon seen in the recently released "Inherent Vice," but the vintage paranoid Pynchon of "V" and "The Crying of Lot 49." Chaon has produced a book that is closer to Pynchonesque than has Pynchon himself. </p> <p>Of course, that kind of recommendation might just turn people off the book, so let me say that another set of books to which Chaon's might invite comparison is Stieg Larsson's best-sellers "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Played With Fire," books that also feature an orphaned computer hacker - albeit one who is a hero and not a villain. </p> <p>These titles share some of the same DNA or, if you will, computer code with "Await Your Reply," though Chaon's book is far less cartoonish, which makes it all the more chilling and convincing in its conclusions about the ultimate fragility of the self. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-84401214976340356672009-07-29T09:08:00.001-07:002009-07-29T09:08:39.227-07:00Dallas to host 4 days of 'Twilight'<span class="vitstorybody"> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><h5 class="vitstorydate"><span class="vitstorydate">12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 29, 2009</span></h5></b></span> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline">By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News<br />Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of PublishingPerspectives.com and covers the South for Publishers Weekly. </span></b></span> <span class="vitstorybody"> <p>If you encounter a group of dramatically dressed women walking the streets of downtown Saturday night sporting Goth garb, Venetian masks and fangs, cover your necks: You've just encountered some of the 3,000 <i>Twilight </i>devotees in town for TwiCon 2009, four days of Stephenie Meyer-inspired mania.</p><p>Expect lots of screaming – of a good kind.</p><p>The <i>Twilight </i>books, featuring the star-crossed lovers Edward, a vampire, and Bella, a human, have sold 53 million copies worldwide. The first movie in the series grossed more than $380 million, and the sequel <i>New Moon </i>is due in November. So if the phenomenon is not quite at Harry Potter levels, it does seem here to stay. </p><p>TwiCon 2009 has sold out, even at $255 a ticket. That buys attendees four days of access to serious-minded academic panel discussions (one is called "Your mood swings are kinda giving me whiplash: Twilight Fans and the Negotiation of Gender and Feminism"), Bella-themed self-defense classes, a TwilightMOMs meeting room, a fan fiction contest and (natch) a Red Cross blood drive. </p><div class="dwssubhead">Meet the cast</div><p>The highlight for many will be the opportunity to mingle with cast members from the movies. None of the leads will be there, but the schedule includes a half-dozen others, such as Alex Meraz, who plays a werewolf in <i>New Moon</i>, and one-time Midland resident Jackson Rathbone, who played Jasper Hale in <i>Twilight</i>. (Autograph and photography sessions with the stars cost extra.) </p><p>There are sessions on running <i>Twilight</i> fan sites, writing seminars, talks about vampire genetics and an end-of-conference "Volturi Masque Ball" – a Venetian-style ball modeled on one from the books and hosted by the Volturi, the de facto royal family of vampires, who live in Italy. TwiCon's version will feature music by <i>Twilight </i>tribute bands, and the Volturi will be played by the conference organizers.</p><div class="dwssubhead">Online groundswell</div><p>TwiCon is the brainchild of 19-year-old Becka Grapsy, a student at Penn State University, and Bailey Gauthier, a 20-something Canadian (a.k.a., vlogger "NoMoreMarbles"), who together last year circulated an online petition among <i>Twilight </i>fans asking about interest in a convention and gathered some 10,000 names.</p><p>The result caught the interest of North Carolina-based freelance book publicist Becky Scoggins. "I contacted Becka and Bailey last August, and we decided to form a company to stage it," Scoggins said. She emphasizes that the event is unofficial and not endorsed by Meyer or her publisher Little, Brown. </p><p>Dallasites may be disappointed to learn that their city was chosen as the site for TwiCon not because <i>Twilight </i>fans have any particular affinity for the place, but because it is convenient to get to and relatively affordable. </p><p>Contrary to the general perception that <i>Twilight</i> fans are primarily tween girls, "Eighty percent of those registered fall in the 25- to 40-year-old age range," said Scoggins. "The rest are 13-25, and nearly all are girls and women. There are some men, but those are almost all dads." </p><div class="dwssubhead">A few guys</div><p>One young male fan who will be there is 20-year-old Richardson-native Kaleb Nation, who runs the popular Web site TwilightGuy.com and whose debut novel, <i>Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse</i>, is being published on Sept. 1. He's one of the featured guests.</p><p>Scoggins says interest in the convention has been strong enough that she and her partners have planned two more for next year: one in Las Vegas and one in Toronto. </p><p>And if all goes well, Scoggins says that she might approach Meyer, her publisher and Summit Entertainment, who is producing the films, to officially participate. </p><p>"Our biggest goal for this year is to make sure that Stephenie knows we appreciate her," said Scoggins. "We're not trying to make money off of her, we just want her to know that 3,000 fans got together to talk about her books. To even think that people are getting together to talk about books feels really good."</p><p>Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of PublishingPerspectives.com and covers the South for Publishers Weekly.</p></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-29653262490523397712009-06-29T08:01:00.000-07:002009-06-29T08:02:07.238-07:00Book review: 'Driving Like Crazy' by P.J. O'Rourke<span class="vitstorybody"> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><h5 class="vitstorydate"><span class="vitstorydate"> Sunday, June 21, 2009</span></h5></b></span> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline">By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News<br />Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of PublishingPerspectives.com and covers the South for Publishers Weekly.</span></b></span> <span class="vitstorybody"> <p>This Father's Day, I'm in the unenviable position of telling my own dad that he was wrong. As a child of Detroit, born in Henry Ford General Hospital, I've heard all my life that I should have dropped the writing career to become an engineer. "The Big Three are always hiring," my 69-year-old father would occasionally tell me. He still buys a new fully loaded Mustang with "sport package" every other year. </p><p>Well, I never thought I'd see the day come when journalism, a beleaguered industry if there ever was one, looked like a more secure prospect than building cars. What a shame.</p><p>Like me, P.J. O'Rourke grew up around the car business. Born in Toledo, Ohio, an hour south of the Motor City, his family owned a Buick dealership. His cousin would go on to run the Ohio Car Dealers Association, while O'Rourke would go on to become a world-famous political satirist and journalist. But cars remained in his blood, a passion he indulged by taking long road trips on four and two-wheeled vehicles alike, writing about them for magazines such as <i>Car and Driver</i><i>, Rolling Stone</i> and <i>Esquire</i>. </p><p>His latest book, <i>Driving Like Crazy</i>, collects and updates 18 of these stories. The span covers the arc of O'Rourke's life, from convertible guy to SUV guy, and provides some wonderful contrasts between the younger and wiser O'Rourkes. </p><p>"Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street?" he writes in "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your ... [ahem] Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." O'Rourke wrote that in the early 1970s for <i>National Lampoon</i>. </p><p>Today's version is titled: "How to Drive Fast When the Drugs Are Mostly Lipitor, the ... [ahem] Needs More Squeezing Than It Used to Before It Gets the Idea, and Spilling Your Drink Is No Problem If you Keep the Sippy Cups from When Your Kids Were Toddlers and Leave the Baby Seat in the Back Seat so that When You get Pulled Over You Look Like a Perfectly Innocent Grandparent." About the only thing that stays the same from the earlier piece is his advice about what car handles best: "Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car," his younger self writes. "Nothing handles better than a rented car." (No surprise, he later profiles the founder of Rent-a-Wreck.)</p><p>Elsewhere in this treat of a book are moving homages to NASCAR, SUVs, Jeeps and the American car in general. But mostly there are road trips: Michigan to Indiana on a Harley, Canada to Mexico in a Jeep, across Baja and California in races, and through Pakistan and India in a Land Rover. His traveling companions range from Houstonian Michael Nesmith (of the 1960s band The Monkees) to his own children. As with almost all of O'Rourke's work, it's easy reading, and he's just as good, if not better, at cracking wise about cars and driving as he is about liberal politics.</p><p>Here he is on the driving dynamics of a Mercedes M-class SUV, which he admits is really a minivan: "The M-class rode like your boss' executive office chair, steered like the prize dressage horse owned by your boss' wife, and stopped faster than your paycheck would if you got caught naked on any of these things." </p><p>He's still got it. Fortunately for us, he chose journalism over being a Buick dealer. If the latter had been the case, he'd probably be out of work, and we wouldn't have this wonderful collection with which to reminisce about the heyday of Detroit. </p><p>It's hard to think about anyone ever getting as passionate about a Prius (or Insight or Volt, for that matter) as O'Rourke (or my father, for that matter). He remains a fan of the growling, gas-guzzling, big American roadster, may it rest in peace.</p><p>Ed Nawotka lives in Houston. He is editor-in-chief of PublishingPerspectives.com and covers the South for Publishers Weekly.</p><p>books@dallasnews.com</p><p>Driving Like Crazy</p><p><b><i>Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-bending, Celebrating America the Way It's Supposed To Be – With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn</i></b> </p><p><b>P.J. O'Rourke</b> </p><p>(Atlantic Monthly, $24) </p></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-82700286621730389022009-06-29T07:59:00.000-07:002009-06-29T08:00:31.380-07:00'How to Sell': The Dallas jewelry trade as Nietzchean nightmare<p><span class="byline">By Edward Nawotka</span><br /><span class="source">SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN</span><br /> <span class="date"> Sunday, June 21, 2009 </span></p> <p>Clancy Martin's debut novel, "How to Sell" — set in the Dallas-Fort Worth jewelry business in the 1980s and '90s — is the kind of book that leaves you feeling dirty. It rubs off on you and makes a mark you'll want to try to scrub off. </p> <p>First, provided you've ever bought jewelry or a Swiss watch, you might wonder at the authenticity of the thing, question whether you got taken. Is that Rolex bogus? Is your wedding band made of real gold or platinum? Or is it just plated something or other? A fraud? </p> <p>"How to Sell" centers on two brothers, Bobby and Jimmy, who were separated when their parents divorced (the younger brother, Bobby, lived in Calgary, Alberta, with his mother, while Jimmy wound up in Scottsdale, Ariz., with his father). They reunite when Jimmy invites Bobby to work with him at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. The year is 1987 and Bobby is a 16-year-old high school dropout when he starts work. At first, he is given menial tasks — cleaning showcases, setting watches — until he sells a gold Rolex President for $4,995. The sale was a mistake, it turns out, since the watch was the display model. All the while, Jimmy introduces Bobby to drugs, fast cars, posh living and loose women. Key among the women is Lisa, Jimmy's sometime mistress, for whom Bobby falls. </p> <p>"How to Sell" is a roman à clef, based on Martin's own life, which, according to publicity material from his publisher, included a career as a "conman and luxury jeweler" in Dallas in the 1980s and '90s. Today, Martin, who was born in Canada but graduated from Baylor and later the University of Texas with a doctorate — writing a dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of deception under the late Robert C. Solomon — teaches philosophy at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. </p> <p>Martin is a fantastic fiction writer, and in "How to Sell" he weaves together both a gripping tale of debauchery and a more nuanced work of philosophical inquiry. The result is a very readable, if somewhat didactic, morality tale that is also extremely edifying about business, greed and human nature. </p> <p>The "shark tank" of the jewelry business that Martin describes is like a foreign land, one you think you know, but come to realize you can't begin to comprehend. There are the minor scams — putting off customers who've paid for watches that may never get delivered by lying that the watch is delayed by customs, or selling someone a $400 cleaning and adjustment on an automatic-movement watch because the customer thinks it's broken, when it's just stopped because automatic movements self-wind only when worn. Then there's the big stuff, like selling used Rolexes as new, or selling diamonds with bogus papers. </p> <p>Frequently, one character or another is imparting a lesson to Bobby. "In this business, always trust your eyes," a Jewish diamond dealer tells him, just before the old man pistol-whips a would-be robber. A Swiss watch dealer known as Granddad teaches Bobby "the twenty-two logical fallacies." When Bobby's not hustling a buck, he's reading books on Zen and Buddhism at bookstores, a habit picked up from his father, a semi-homeless, former Canadian Olympic goalie who wanders the Southern United States and Caribbean sleeping with women and starting churches — a fallen Nietzschean Übermensch if there ever was one. </p> <p>The book sets up a dichotomy between faith in the material — what you can see and feel, such as diamonds and gold — and the immaterial — what you can't see and must simply trust, such as loyalty and love. The conclusion is that value is in the eye of the beholder. </p> <p>This is not a book about redemption: Nearly all the characters are bent. The men are disloyal, greedy, self-centered philanderers and crooks, while the women are almost all literal or figurative prostitutes. Some characters come to a bad end, while others are merely subsisting until the inevitable crash. </p> <p>Mostly, "How to Sell" concerns the constant power struggle of the buy-sell relationship. In this, it is Nietzschean to the core. </p> <p>What you're likely to remember — aside from the queasy feeling you'll be left with — is to distrust salesmen even more than perhaps you already do. You might also learn to pity them: As a jeweler named Old John observes near the book's end of Bobby, who is now in his mid-20s, with a wife, a child and two girlfriends — one, Lisa, now living as a prostitute, the other, his chief employee, a gun-toting beauty — "A salesman is the opposite of a businessman, Bobby. A businessman cares about the practical details of life. A salesman is an artist. He can't tie his own shoelaces. He lives on tomorrow. He's a cloud-and-sky guy, a rainbow man. He can't make a ... dollar out of four quarters and a can of glue, if you want to hear the truth of it." </p> <p>Ultimately, though, it is Martin, the professor, instructing us on everything from how to sell a diamond engagement ring to a couple to why men in the industry prefer stainless steel Blancpains and IWC watches to gold Rolexes. The premise of the book boils down to this: "This is how to sell," Martin writes. "A golden lie in a nest of truths." That's also a heck of a description of fiction writing itself. </p> <p>How much of "How to Sell" is true to Martin's own life story doesn't really matter. As Nietzsche wrote, "All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth," and this is one powerful novel, offering an unsettling, gritty and raw view of the business of life. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-16557589531805462142009-06-29T07:58:00.000-07:002009-06-29T07:59:12.956-07:00E-publisher Stay Thirsty Lures Veteran Writers<h3>by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 6/29/2009</h3> <span> <p>Shamus Award–winning mystery writer David Fulmer first heard about Stay Thirsty Press when a friend sent him an e-mail. “It was a notice from Craigslist that a publisher was looking for original works to publish as e-books,” said Fulmer. “I'd had this book, <i>The Last Time</i>, that had technically been shopped around by my agent, but it was different from all my other work and was always at the bottom of the stack. I'd been working on it for eight years, and thought, what have I got to lose.” </p> <p>The Craigslist posting was from a new Chicago e-book publisher, Stay Thirsty Press. That was on June 1. By June 7, Fulmer's seventh novel, <i>The Last Time</i>, was available as a digital-only download for the Kindle on Amazon.com for $9.99, published by Stay Thirsty Press. With editors and authors being let go by many traditional publishers, Dusty Sang, publisher of Stay Thirsy, said, “I thought maybe this was a great time to find authors I'd be interested in working with. I put an ad in Craig's List New York and have had hundreds of submissions.”</p> <p>A former entertainment lawyer, Sang, 61, became a publisher because of a family tragedy. In 2004, his 24-year-old son, Ryan, died from complications related to bipolar disorder; as a tribute, Sang funded the launch of StayThirsty.com, an online music and art magazine run by Ryan's friends. Today, Sang's leveraging the brand into e-books as an effort to monetize the site. Stay Thirsty's first book, <i>Mrs. Beast</i> by Pamela Ditchoff, went on sale March 22, just three weeks after she contacted Sang. Before signing with Stay Thirsty, Ditchoff published the novel <i>Seven Days &amp; Seven Sins</i> (Shaye Areheart Books, 2003) and earlier, <i>The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies</i> (Coffee House Press, 2005). She plans to publish the sequel to <i>Mrs. Beast</i> with Stay Thirsty.</p> <p>The first royalty checks went out to Ditchoff 60 days after the book first went on sale. The press sends the author the sales statement from Amazon, and does a 50/50 split. </p> <p>Stay Thirsty has just published its first nonfiction title: a collection of columns from <i>EDGE</i> magazine by David Toussaint entitled <i>Toussaint!</i> Toussaint penned <i>Gay and Lesbian Weddings</i> for Ballantine Books in 2004, but found no takers for this work. “Dusty doesn't have the clout of Random House,” Toussaint said. “The upside is that he's only working with a couple of writers, so the personal attention is wonderful. As for the e-book thing, of course it's a compromise. Some people have flat-out told me they won't read anything digital. On the upside, I've spoken with people who loved having it on their phone. They also liked the $9.99 price.”</p> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-36091703700893836852009-06-10T09:08:00.001-07:002009-06-10T09:08:49.565-07:00Book review: 'Guts' by Robert Nylen12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 2, 2009<br /><br /><br />By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News <br />Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer. <br /><br /><br />Robert Nylen completed his memoir Guts shortly before he died of colorectal cancer in December. He was 64. A lifelong ad salesman, Nylen understood the power of words to persuade and so he chose not to dignify his disease with a proper name, opting to call it by a nickname that can't be printed in a family newspaper.<br /><br />As you might expect, the disease doesn't get top billing in the book. He focuses on his combat experience in the Vietnam War, where he was wounded "two-and-a-half" times, and his various business ventures: He was once vice president and associate publisher of Texas Monthly and later founded Beliefnet.com, despite being neither "spiritual nor religious," just "sanctimonious." <br /><br />Throughout, Nylen meditates on modern manhood and, in particular, on the meaning of the word "tough," a word he calls a "fittingly compact fortress." <br /><br />The final fifth is given over to documenting the progress of his cancer, diagnosed in 2004, and the many, often difficult, treatments. As his body declines, he relates moments of humility (some comic, some sad) and he becomes more contemplative – analyzing the work of Susan Sontag (who also wrote about and died of cancer), and flirting with the idea of Stoicism (which he rejects because he believed the Stoics favored man-boy homosexuality). <br /><br />By the end, Nylen comes to believe the highest virtue is a willingness to go all-out, not in the sense of "superlative adspeak," but in the sense of being resilient, of taking responsibility for the course of one's own life, doing what's right and living each day as if it's the last, no matter what the situation. <br /><br />Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer.<br /><br />books@dallasnews.com<br /><br />Guts<br /><br />Combat, Hell-raising, Cancer, Business Start-ups and Undying Love: One American Guy's Reckless, Lucky Life <br /><br />Robert Nylen <br /><br />(Random House, $25)<div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-72829624581735677052009-05-11T19:15:00.000-07:002009-05-11T19:16:14.128-07:00Change Makers: Joyce Meskis<h2>Tattered Cover owner adds new role with Denver Publishing Institute</h2> <h3>by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 5/11/2009</h3> <span> <p>As a student at Purdue, Joyce Meskis envisioned her future as that of a college English professor. “In my mind's eye, I saw myself kicking the fall leaves on a campus as I walked to my nice but not ostentatious house, where French doors would be open and I could hear the strains of Chopin being played by my children,” she says. But a stint at the college bookstores changed her course, and today Meskis is known to all as owner of Denver's esteemed Tattered Cover Book Store and one of the most outspoken free speech advocates in bookselling. Meskis added to her bookselling career in January 2008 when she was named to succeed Elizabeth Geiser as the director of the University of Denver's summer Publishing Institute.</p> <p>The institute was founded by Geiser in 1976, just two years after Meskis purchased Tattered Cover, and the two institutions have grown side by side. The institute has graduated nearly 3,000 students, while Tattered Cover has grown from a single location of 950 square feet to three locations. Her store's growth over the past three decades—and the very fact of its survival—is something she credits to the growth of Denver rather than to any particular ambition of her own. “There's a misperception about Denver that it's a community steeped in a western tradition, if you will,” she says, “but people were attracted to the city. They came here, had families—it became a magnet for well-educated people all over the country. It's no different than in a place like Portland, which grew Powell's, for example.”</p> <p>Over her 35-year career, Meskis's success as a bookseller has sometimes been overshadowed by the store's well-documented legal battles in defense of First Amendment rights. Her line in this regard is well rehearsed: “Trouble finds us, we don't go looking for it,” she says. “When you're in a general community, you will always have challenges. There are things I didn't expect. I didn't expect so many court battles. You've got to do what you've got to do.”</p> <p>Meskis describes the rewards of bookselling as two-fold. Empirically, she says, “There is an incredible bubble that rises in me when I hear a customer, especially if it's a child, say, 'Oh, wow, you've got that book.' It's exquisitely gratifying.” Philosophically, she says, it's the social profit that makes up for the struggle to make a financial profit. “Being there for the community of readers that you serve and doing the very best that you can do to encourage and enhance the reading lives of the people in your community is how we can contribute to making a better world,” Meskis says.</p> <p>She sees publishing as serving much the same function, and it's a message she's been delivering to students at the University of Denver's Publishing Institute for nearly 20 years, where she has been a regular lecturer on bookselling. Now, as director, she has the opportunity to instill this philosophy even deeper into the program.</p> <p>While it might seem like a tough time to be steward of a program that promises to train students for jobs in an industry that has seen so much bloodletting in recent months, the facts prove otherwise. In 2008, 96 students graduated from the four-week program, and this year the number of applicants is up. “The applicants we're getting are even better than last year,” Meskis adds, “and many of them are stating in the applications that while they recognize there are changes in the industry, they continue to love the idea of publishing and reading and doing something worthwhile.”</p> <p>Meskis's has enticed an A-list of some 50 publishing people to lecture this summer, and Harper Studio's Bob Miller will give the keynote and Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon &amp; Schuster, will give the graduation speech. “I see the students as being able to participate as agents of change, people who will be able to make publishing work best for the community that they choose to serve,” Meskis says.</p> <p>Though a full-time university career may have been seductive in her youth, Meskis still plans to devote the bulk of her time and attention to her bookstores. “It's extremely gratifying work,” she says.</p> <p>“People may love their technologies, but ink on paper between boards is part of the pleasure of reading,” says Meskis. “Bookshops are the focal point in a community where reader and writer come together. It's important that publishers continue to recognize and acknowledge that.”</p> </span> <table bgcolor="#ffffff" width="100%"><tbody><tr> <td class="sidebarheader"><span class="sidebarheader"> </span></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="sidebareven"><span class="copy"> <h3><span class="sidebarheadline"><a name="Profile">Profile</a></span></h3> <span> <p><strong>Name:</strong> Joyce Meskis</p> <p><strong>Age:</strong> 67</p> <p><strong>Company:</strong> Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver; University of Denver Publishing Institute</p> <p><strong>Title:</strong> Co-owner; Director</p> <p><strong>First job:</strong> working “semester rush” at Purdue's bookstore.</p> <p><strong>Publishing in the future:</strong> a work in progress, as it incorporates new techologies with the continuing demands and challenges of the marketplace.</p> </span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-55214695511741765632009-05-04T09:50:00.001-07:002009-05-04T09:50:49.750-07:00Keeping the Mailer Spirit Alive<h3>by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 5/4/2009</h3> <span> <p>A few months before Norman Mailer died in November of 2007, his longtime collaborator Lawrence Schiller sat down with the legendary author to discuss his legacy. “There's a whole generation of people out there who don't know who you are,” Schiller told Mailer, “and I don't want you to be an author who someone reads six or seven books and doesn't read the rest.” Since Mailer's death, Schiller has devised a plan to make sure that doesn't happen, launching the Norman Mailer Writing Awards, organizing the Norman Mailer Writers Colony and enticing publishers to reissue or repackage some of Mailer's lesser known books. “Usually all an estate does in the first five years after a writer's death is issue a comprehensive book of letters—and, yes, we'll do that—but this has a different energy to it,” Schiller said. </p> <p>The first Norman Mailer Writing Awards will be presented this October 20 at a benefit gala chaired by Tina Brown and David Remnick at Cipriani in New York City. Four awards will be presented. Toni Morrison will be honored for “lifetime achievement” and the late David Halberstam for “distinguished journalism”; as well, there will be two winners of a new nationwide writing contest, sponsored by the Norman Mailer Writing Colony and administered by the National Council of Teachers of English. One prize of $5,000 will go to a high school senior and a $10,000 award will go to a college student. The idea behind the awards, explained Schiller, is to expose Mailer's name to as many young people as possible. “I want students to go out and discover who Norman Mailer was and is,” he said.</p> <p>The Writers Colony, situated in Mailer's former home in Provincetown, Mass., will induct its inaugural class of fellows this July. The first list of seven fellows includes Philip Shenon, author of <i>The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation</i>, and Alex Gilvarry, a former editor at Scholastic. Lasting a month, it caters to emerging writers of fiction and nonfiction who will be given room, board and a community with which to discuss their work. The program will be overseen by Greg Curtis and Jim Magnuson, both of the University of Texas at Austin, where the Mailer archive is held. In addition, starting this month, the colony will begin a series of workshops taught by Mailer's friends, ranging from J. Michael Lennon teaching “Writing Techniques of the New Journalism” to Douglas Brinkley on “Historical Research and the Narrative.” All workshop participants, save for two of seven spots, will be funded by scholarships from the colony.</p> <p>Finally, Schiller has enlisted publishers to publish collections of letters and take another look at some of Mailer's lesser-known works. The <i>New Yorker</i>, the <i>New York Review of Books</i> and <i>Playboy</i> have all published excerpts from Mailer's letters, while Taschen has two new books planned, including <i>MoonFire</i>, a collection of photos of the first moon landing that will incorporate text from Mailer's 1970 book on the landings, <i>A Fire on the Moon</i>, and <i>America</i>, a photographic compendium, also with text by Mailer. “All the introductions to Mailer's works from now on will be done by young writers. Colum McCann will introduce <i>MoonFire</i>, for example,” said Schiller.</p> <p>“What Larry is doing is something that encapsulates all sides of Mailer, his public persona and his private side,” said Chris Napolitano, <i>Playboy</i>'s editorial director, who has worked with both Mailer and Schiller. “Our various projects—the colony, prizes, publications—are not only to preserve interest in his writings, but his craft,” Schiller said. “The way he worked—the tenacity, creativity and generosity—is in some way just as important as the books, the films and his run for mayor.”</p> </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-11252618291269911082009-05-03T18:20:00.001-07:002009-05-03T18:20:23.731-07:00'Woods Burner' by John Pipkin: Engaging debut novel about Henry David Thoreau<span class="vitstorybody"> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><h5 class="vitstorydate"><span class="vitstorydate">12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 3, 2009</span></h5></b></span> <span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline">By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News<br />Edward Nawotka is a Houston freelance writer.</span></b></span> <span class="vitstorybody"> <p>In September 2003, <i>Harper's </i>magazine ran a "Harper's Index" item that read: "Estimated acres of forest Henry David Thoreau burned down in 1844 trying to cook fish he had caught for dinner: 300."</p><p>That line became the seed for Austinite John Pipkin's wonderful debut novel, <i>Woods Burner</i>, which recounts the day of the fire from the perspective of Thoreau and the members of the community who come together to battle the conflagration, one that threatened to raze Concord. </p><p>Pipkin, who holds a doctorate in romantic poetry from Rice University and served as the executive director of the Writers' League of Texas from 2006 to 2008, draws a detailed picture of then 26-year-old Thoreau as conflicted man, one on the verge of abandoning his literary aspirations.</p><p>As the fire smolders around him, the result of an ill-conceived decision to spark a campfire in a tree stump on a windy day in the midst of a drought, he commits himself to a life of pragmatism, vowing, "Henceforth I shall sign my name Henry David Thoreau – Civil Engineer." </p><p>Of course, any school-aged child knows that things turned out quite differently. Throughout the novel, Pipkin imagines a series of encounters that galvanize Thoreau and lead him to live in isolation at Walden Pond just one year later. </p><p>As the fire rages, all manner of townsfolk, privileged and poor, white and black, are compelled to fight the inferno. At one point the young Thoreau finds himself side-by-side with a man he dubs "Young America," one he's surprised to learn has "lived in the woods, alone." Readers will already know this man is Oddmund Hus, a Norwegian immigrant and farmhand, who is obsessed with his employer's Irish wife, Emma.</p><p>It is through these imagined characters (a foppish Boston bookseller, a troubled reverend) that Pipkin depicts the American melting pot, still simmering with strife from the Revolutionary War and preparing to boil into the Civil War. </p><p>However didactic and cerebral this may sound, the story is infused with moments of genuine drama, peril and suspense. <i>Woods Burner </i>is edifying, engaging and satisfying, an exemplary illustration of how fiction can illuminate the past, bring history to life and make it feel as fresh and relevant as the present day.</p></span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-47169752058325149462009-04-27T10:26:00.001-07:002009-04-27T10:26:45.648-07:00Carmichael's Bookstore: Bookseller of the Year<div style="text-align: left;">by Edward Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 4/27/2009 <span> <p>On a cold, rainy night in April, more than 60 people drift into Carmichael's bookstore on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville, Ky., the bookstore owned by Michael Boggs and Carol Besse. They are there for a showing of <em>Paperback Dreams</em>, the PBS documentary about the struggles of Cody's and Kepler's, independent bookstores in Northern California. “It's like that old Joni Mitchell song says—'You don't know what you've got till it's gone' ” remarks Besse at the end of the movie.</p> <p>Among those in the audience that night is Norton sales rep Johanna Hynes, who, along her husband, Bob Barnett, a sales rep for Cambridge University Press, lives a few blocks from the store. “Carmichael's is the reason I chose to live here in Louisville,” says Hynes in the ensuing discussion about independent retailing, one that featured panelists John Timmons, owner of Louisville's Ear X-tacy record store, and David Daley, lifestyles editor of the <em>Louisville Courier-Journal</em>.</p> <p>“I spend most of my time on the road living in Hampton Inns,” continues Hynes. “So when I get home, it's important to me to walk into a bookstore that isn't generic, where they know my taste in books, know my family. My son thinks Michael Boggs is a hero. How many five-year-olds have a bookseller as their hero?”</p> <p>Boggs and Besse opened Carmichael's—the name is a combination of their first names—on April, 15, 1978. The choice of Tax Day was deliberate. “You didn't need to worry about taxes unless you were making money,” says Boggs. The couple met while college students at Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) in St. Petersburg and later worked together at Barbara's Bookstores in Chicago. “We learned everything from Barbara's,” notes Boggs.</p> <p>The couple operate two Carmichael's locations. The original store is on Bardstown Road in the Highlands neighborhood. It measures a mere 976 sq.-ft. The second, on Frankfort Avenue, is about a mile from the first, in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. It, too, is small, just 1,521 sq.-ft., including the small office space Besse and Boggs share just off the sales floor. (In 1992, the couple opened a third location in the suburb of Prospect, which closed in 1996.)</p> <p>The two stores' small size has proven more of an advantage than one might think, says Boggs, particularly when it comes to buying. “I have to be ruthless about what I bring into the store,” he says. “So I need to know what my customers want.” He orders as much as possible direct from publishers and minimizes the use of wholesalers. “The biggest mistake small bookstores make is trying to be like a big bookstore, so I don't sink tens of thousands of dollars into sections where I cannot compete against the chains or the Internet.”</p> <p>He doesn't stock sports, business, computer and spoken-word audio titles. Sidelines are limited to just a selection of cards and journals. You also won't find many politically conservative titles. “I don't feel a need to cater to everyone and make no apologies for my love of peace, love and progressive politics,” explains Boggs. “I don't see that as censorship, but as an exercise of my personal freedoms. People know what to expect when they come here.”</p> <p>Efficiency extends beyond buying to general operations. Boggs and his staff create all promotional materials and signage themselves, and Boggs doesn't hire people to do anything he feels he can do himself. He even programmed his own computer inventory system, back in 1982, and still uses it today; though it still looks like a souped-up version of DOS, he points out that it's so simple to use that he was able to convert it to the 13-digit ISBN system in a weekend.</p> <p>“We just never lost the idea of doing everything on a shoestring,” says Besse. “Of course, part of the reason was that for a long period we weren't making much money.” At various times either Boggs or Besse held full-time jobs outside the store.</p> <p>The focus on efficiency extends to the way they govern their staff of eight full-timers and 10 part-timers. “We don't have a lot of rules or regulations,” says Besse. “They are simply encouraged to do what is necessary to make our customers happy.”</p> <p>Trust, in part, derives from the fact that three full-time staffers are members of their immediate family: Boggs and Besse's 27-year-old daughter, Miranda; Besse's older sister Diane Estep and Diane's daughter Kelly. “I serve as a kind of peacemaker at times between my parents,” says Miranda, who serves as Carmichael's returns manager. “I'm also a sounding board for employees who want to know what my parents might think of this or that.”</p> <p>Miranda's cousin Kelly started working when she was 12, dusting shelves and learning to use the computer. She took a full-time position when she was 19 and now manages the Bardstown Road store and buys children's books.</p> <p>Kelly met her husband when she hired him as a part-timer. Now their two young children spend two days a week at the store where they are looked after by the children's grandmother Diane, who manages the Carmichael's school sales division and serves as bookkeeper.</p> <p>Diane Estep is nearly as important to Carmichael's success as either Boggs or Besse. Her school sales division supplies trade books to 225 local public schools throughout Jefferson County and contributes nearly a third of Carmichael's $2 million of annual revenue. The bookstore first won the county contract in 1996, after a clerk at their main independent competitor, the now defunct Hawley-Cooke bookstore chain, failed to sign the annual bid sheet. They shared the contract for the next decade, and when Hawley-Cooke was sold to Borders in 2003, Carmichael's assumed the entire job. Though the margins are smaller, Estep says the arrangement is vital to the store's cash flow. “The school district always pays within 30 days,” she says, “which in turn allows us to pay our bills quite fast.”</p> <p>Estep says the closing of Hawley-Cooke was one turning point for the store. The other, she says, came in 2002 when Besse returned to work at Carmichael's full-time. “It was like we got renewed ownership without having sold the store,” says Estep of her sister. Perhaps the most significant contribution Besse made was a commitment to store events. With the demise of Hawley-Cooke, Carmichael's became the go-to bookstore for publishers looking for an independent. It has since hosted a bibliography's worth of A-list authors. Among them was David Sedaris, who drew a crowd of 600—a crowd that required Carmichael's to close off the street outside. (Sedaris is returning again this summer for his paperback tour for <em>When You Are Engulfed in Flames</em>.)</p> <p>Besse refers to keep events in-house, which typically means the larger Frankfort Avenue store, where there is room to seat 60 with standing room for another 100. “You want your event to bring people into the store so they will be surrounded by your books and buy them,” she says, though she's not averse to off-site events when circumstances call for it.</p> <p>Daley of the <em>Louisville Courier-Journal</em> calls Carmichael's “the intellectual heart of our city. It's the one store with a commitment to literature, and to these neighborhoods in particular,” he says.</p> <p>Kate McCune, the Midwestern sales rep for HarperCollins and <em>PW</em> 2007 Rep of the Year, championed Carmichael's nomination for Bookseller of the Year, agrees. “It's very seldom these days that I go into a store and feel as defined an identity and a relationship with a community like I do with Carmichael's and Louisville,” she says.</p> <p>Community—not profit—is the one word you hear most often at Carmichael's. The staff see their customers as a kind of extended family. “We're closely woven into the fabric of our community,” says Besse. “We pay serious attention to our customers, their likes and dislikes, needs and wants. We give gift certificates to just about anyone who walks into our door and asks for a donation for a local school, church, neighborhood or community nonprofit.”</p> <p>Carmichael's relentless focus on efficiency, customer services and community building is paying off; over the past 10 years, sales have tripled and profits doubled. Even in this difficult economy, business is up 9% over 2008.</p> <p>Asked why his store is so successful while so many others have faltered, Boggs is blunt. “I think booksellers today may be encouraged to waste too much time and money doing things that don't sell books,” he says. “The thing you have to do in this business is sell books.”</p> </span></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-63882258716037580622009-04-14T09:28:00.001-07:002009-04-14T09:28:54.466-07:00'Wonderful World' by Javier Calvo: Pulp fiction with a European twist12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, April 12, 2009<br /><br />By EDWARD NAWOTKA / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News<br />Edward Nawotka is a freelance writer in Houston. E-mail books@ dallasnews.com.<br /><br />Spaniard Javier Calvo's first novel to be translated into English, Wonderful World, is a peculiar amalgam of crime caper, literary homage and Eurotrash sideshow.<br /><br />It is December 2006, and the city of Barcelona is plastered with posters touting the arrival of the latest Stephen King novel, Wonderful World, "the story of a man that wakes up one day and discovers that everything around him has turned perfect ... His co-workers are friendly to him. His ex-wife, too ... .Wars end. Politicians turn smart."<br /><br />Meanwhile, in the real world, antiques dealer Lucas Giraut is coping with the fallout from his father's death three months earlier. His affairs are as complicated as the cartonniers, antique desks filled with secret compartments, he collects.<br /><br />Giraut's mother, Fanny, whose face has been rendered an immovable mask by a series of collagen injections and face-lifts, is challenging Giraut's mental competence in a bid for taking over the family's restoration business. He has enlisted a motley group to steal a quartet of Irish paintings his father had tried to acquire, landing him in jail. The thugs include: a gangster named Bocanegra (Black Mouth) who wears women's fur coats and runs a strip club called Dark Side of the Moon; a white Russian Rastafarian jewel thief; a thuggish giant who resembles the Thing from the Fantastic Four; and a sex addicted ex-cop.<br /><br />All the while, he can only confide in his downstairs neighbor, a pre-pubescent girl named Valentina Parini, the self-proclaimed "Top European Expert on the work of Stephen King," who daydreams methods of creatively killing her schoolmates.<br /><br />As Giraut journeys deeper into the underworld (and both Calvo's and the faux King novel progress), the book's strange mysteries begin to unravel. Why, for example, was Giraut's father so deathly afraid of Windows and why was he so obsessed with the band Pink Floyd? Whether this will matter to the reader depends entirely on how much you're willing to indulge Calvo's picturesque imagination. This is not a novel about deep emotions; rather, it is one intended to dazzle with its audacity. It is loaded with X-rated vice and entertains through exaggeration. (Think of a Pedro Almodóvar film.)<br /><br />Despite the allusions to Stephen King, he isn't the model for the work. Calvo is taking his cues from American writers such as Jonathan Lethem – Calvo is married to his sister, who also translated this novel – and David Foster Wallace, whom Calvo has translated into Spanish. Fans of either of the aforementioned writers will best be able to appreciate this European riff on post-modern American pulp.<br /><br />Edward Nawotka is a freelance writer in Houston.<br /><br />Wonderful World<br /><br />Javier Calvo<br /><br />(HarperCollins, $27.99)<div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14278643.post-18839946981019395022009-04-14T09:27:00.001-07:002009-04-14T09:27:50.678-07:00A Good Time To Be Selling Used Booksby Jim Milliot with Ed Nawotka -- Publishers Weekly, 4/13/2009<br /><br />Not all businesses do badly in a recession; one segment of the book market that appears to be holding up fairly well is used books. “People are looking for bargains,” said Kathy Doyle Thomas, executive v-p at the used bookstore chain Half-Price Books, “and Half-Price is a bargain hunter's paradise.” Brian Elliott, president of the online marketplace Alibris, said sales rose about 18% in 2008, slower than in previous years but still a solid gain in difficult times. Sales at Alibris slowed in September, but bounced back enough at the end of the year for holiday sales to increase 8%. Sales continued strong in January, slowed in February, but came back again in March, Elliott said. At Half-Price, sales in the July through February period were up 9% and the company is optimistic it will finish fiscal 2009 on an up note.<br /><br />The recession has not only increased consumers' interest in looking for inexpensive items but also increased interest in selling old books to raise cash, which has bolstered used book dealers' inventory and lowered purchase prices. “We're paying less for our used books because we're seeing more of the same titles,” Thomas said. While the online marketplaces don't buy books, Hannes Blum, president of Abebooks, said many of the sellers who use its service have increased their inventory. Elliott noted that part of Alibris's growth has come from expanding its partnerships with retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.<br /><br />The higher inventory has helped slow what had been one of the industry's biggest concerns, sliding prices. “Prices have stabilized a bit,” Elliott said. “The enormous downward pressure on prices seems to have worked its way through the system.” Still, a key component of the success of the online marketplaces has been the tools they provide, which give sellers and buyers information on pricing trends. And not all parts of the online market have been immune to the economic downturn; high-end antiquarian and rare book sales have suffered from the same lack of discretionary income affecting other book segments. “Collectors have become more cost conscious,” Blum said. Elliott noted, however, that Alibris had strong gains in its rare and collectible segment after it revamped that section on its Web site. At Half-Price, cooking titles have been in strong demand, along with young adult fiction. “People underestimate that section,” Thomas said.<br /><br />Half-Price just opened its 103rd store last month and plans to open two more outlets by Memorial Day. With so many great real estate opportunities available, Doyle said, the challenge now is to not overexpand. After a failed experiment with online sales in the late 1990s, Half-Price has been using Amazon to sell online and is beginning to use the other online marketplaces. Since its launch, Half-Price has had a strong environmentalist bent, and Thomas believes the chain is now benefiting from heightened interest in the environment. “The green movement has helped used books become a little more acceptable,” Thomas said, adding that Half-Price alone has “kept millions and millions of books out of landfills.”<br /><br />Even though the used book market is still enjoying a growth spurt, no one is complacent. “Our job is to keep demand growing faster than supply,” Elliott said.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Book news, reviews and interviews by Edward Nawotka</div>Edward Nawotkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18432320493744156735noreply@blogger.com3